IDEWEP: Web service for astronomical parallel image deconvolution

Image restoration is a significant process commonly applied in many research fields. In particular, image deconvolution algorithms play a very important role in the research methodology in astrophysics, where recorded images are frequently submitted to deconvolution processes. In this paper, we introduce a novel image deconvolution algorithm that is competitive in terms of the restored image quality when compared to classical approaches. We present parallelizations of this algorithm to make it competitive in terms of processing speeds as well. We also present the image deconvolution web portal (IDEWEP) that, using web services technologies, primarily aims to make this general parallel deconvolution method accessible through a web interface. Both the quality of the restored images and running times of the sequential and parallel version have been successfully tested in several sequential and parallel architectures. The IDEWEP portal greatly eases the access and use of the parallel algorithm in high performance architectures. As a contribution to the scientific community, open source sequential and parallel codes are provided and can be freely downloaded from our web portal. r 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.