We examine the problem of finding the optimal weight of the fidelity term in variational denoising. Our aim is to maximize the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the restored image. A theoretical analysis is carried out and several bounds are established on the performance of the optimal strategy and a widely used method, wherein the variance of the residual part equals the variance of the noise. A necessary condition is set to achieve maximal SNR. We provide a practical method for estimating this condition and show that the results are sufficiently accurate for a large class of images, including piecewise smooth and textured images.
Guy Gilboa, Nir A. Sochen, Yehoshua Y. Zeevi