Wavelet-based image restoration for compact X-ray microscopy.

Compact water-window X-ray microscopy with short exposure times will always be limited on photons owing to sources of limited power in combination with low-efficency X-ray optics. Thus, it is important to investigate methods for improving the signal-to-noise ratio in the images. We show that a wavelet-based denoising procedure significantly improves the quality and contrast in compact X-ray microscopy images. A non-decimated, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is applied to original, noisy images. After applying a thresholding procedure to the finest scales of the DWT, by setting to zero all wavelet coefficients of magnitude below a prescribed value, the inverse DWT to the thresholded DWT produces denoised images. It is concluded that the denoising procedure has potential to reduce the exposure time by a factor of 2 without loss of relevant image information.