Framing pyramids

In 1983, Burt and Adelson introduced the Laplacian pyramid (LP) as a multiresolution representation for images. We study the LP using the frame theory, and this reveals that the usual reconstruction is suboptimal. We show that the LP with orthogonal filters is a tight frame, and thus, the optimal linear reconstruction using the dual frame operator has a simple structure that is symmetric with the forward transform. In more general cases, we propose an efficient filterbank (FB) for the reconstruction of the LP using projection that leads to a proved improvement over the usual method in the presence of noise. Setting up the LP as an oversampled FB, we offer a complete parameterization of all synthesis FBs that provide perfect reconstruction for the LP. Finally, we consider the situation where the LP scheme is iterated and derive the continuous-domain frames associated with the LP.