Wavelets

Going beyond the Fourier

transform
Recap of the Fourier Transform:
Uses Sine and cosine waves as basis
functions.
Complex quantity: Modulus (magnitude)
and phase.
Sine and cosine waves have infinite
extent while digital images have a finite
extent.
Digital Images can be represented more
efficiently by localized functions.

Haar wavelets (introduced by Haar in

1910) are the simplest wavelets. Unlike the
1-D Haar Wavelet:
Representation of a 1-D function in
terms of a set of localized basis functions.

What are these functions?

The first basis function is simply a constant

over the whole domain (0,1)
The second basis function is:
x(x)
1
0 1
-1
 1 x(x)

-1

x-1(x)

-1
 00 ( x)
10 (2 x)
11 (2 x 1)
20 (4 x)
21 (4 x 1)
22 (4 x 2)
23 (4 x 3)
We use these basis functions to compute
the Haar transform
Represent the discrete 1-D function as a
column vector.
The 1-D function is defined at N points

c Hf
(where N is a power of 2), then the Haar
wavelet transform is defined by:

Here the rows of H are the basis functions

defined earlier.
If N = 2 then H is given by:
1 1
H2
1 1
 1 1 1 1
1
1 1 1
H4
1 1 0 0

0 0 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
H8
1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
What is the significance of multiplying f
with H?

The rows of H are the basis functions.

If f is written as a column vector,
multiplying f with H is equivalent to taking
the dot product of f with each of the basis
functions.
This gives us the projection of f along
each of the basis functions.
Notice that the basis functions are
orthogonal to each other (just like the sine
and cosine functions).

What is the significance of the

 1 1 1 1 f1
1 1 1 1 f
c 2
1 1 0 0 f3

0 0 1 1 f4

f1 f 2 f3 f 4 The first coefficient

f f f3 f 4 c(1,1) is related to
c 1 2 the average value
f1 f2 of f, while the
remaining terms
f3 f4 correspond to high
frequency terms.
The form of the transformation matrix H
which we have used till now is in the un-
normalized form.

In the normalized form, each of the basis

functions has unit magnitude (or norm).

The normalized form of H4 is:

1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
1
H4
4 2 2 0 0

0 0 2 2
 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2
H8
8 4 4 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 4 4 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 4 4 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4

How do we implement the Haar wavelet

transform in two dimensions?

c HfH T
Here f is a N x N matrix (where N is a power
of 2) and H is also a N x N matrix.
H acts on the columns of f, while HT acts
on the rows of Hf.

How do we do the inverse

transformation?
Since H is an orthogonal matrix , HHT = I.
Therefore H-1 = HT
Therefore:

f H cH T
Let us check whether implementing
the Haar wavelet transform leads to
compression.
Input Image: Entropy = 7.002
bits/pixel
Size of image = 128 x 128
Apply the normalized Haar Wavelet
transform (of size 128 x 128).
The transformed figure looks like this!

Ghosts of the cameraman!

Entropy of transformed image = 5.7003
bits / pixel
Therefore, we can compress more!
Yes! We can.

Compare with the original image.