Diffusion Equation - Discretization (Image)

Discretization (Image)

The product rule is used to rewrite the anisotropic tensor diffusion equation, in standard discretization schemes. Because direct discretization of the diffusion equation with only first order spatial central differences leads to checkerboard artifacts. The rewritten diffusion equation used in image filtering:

where "tr" denotes the trace of the 2nd rank tensor, and superscript "T" denotes transpose, in which in image filtering D(ϕ, r) are symmetric matrices constructed from the eigenvectors of the image structure tensors . The spatial derivatives can then be approximated by two first order and a second order central finite differences. The resulting diffusion algorithm can be written as an image convolution with a varying kernel (stencil) of size 3 × 3 in 2D and 3 × 3 × 3 in 3D.