Signals comprised of a stream of short pulses appear in many applications including bioimaging and radar. The recent finite rate of innovation framework, has paved the way to low rate sampling of such pulses by noticing that only a small number of parameters per unit time are needed to fully describe these signals. Unfortunately, for high rates of innovation, existing sampling schemes are numerically unstable. In this paper we propose a general sampling approach which leads to stable recovery even in the presence of many pulses. We begin by deriving a condition on the sampling kernel which allows perfect reconstruction of periodic streams from the minimal number of samples. We then design a compactly supported class of filters, satisfying this condition. The periodic solution is extended to finite and infinite streams and is shown to be numerically stable even for a large number of pulses. High noise robustness is also demonstrated when the delays are sufficiently separated. Finally, we process ultrasound imaging data using our techniques and show that substantial rate reduction with respect to traditional ultrasound sampling schemes can be achieved.
Regarding the sampling rate, the number of degrees of freedom of the signal per unit time, also known as the rate of innovation, is @math , which is the critical sampling rate. Our sampling rate is @math and therefore we oversample by a factor of @math . In the same scenario, the method in @cite_19 would require a sampling rate of @math , i.e., oversampling by a factor of @math . Properties of polynomial reproducing kernels imply that @math , therefore for any @math , our method exhibits more efficient sampling. A table comparing the various features is shown in Table .
@cite_19
2103300762 2125782250 2158537680 2105483458
Consider the problem of sampling signals which are not bandlimited, but still have a finite number of degrees of freedom per unit of time, such as, for example, nonuniform splines or piecewise polynomials, and call the number of degrees of freedom per unit of time the rate of innovation. Classical sampling theory does not enable a perfect reconstruction of such signals since they are not bandlimited. Recently, it was shown that, by using an adequate sampling kernel and a sampling rate greater or equal to the rate of innovation, it is possible to reconstruct such signals uniquely . These sampling schemes, however, use kernels with infinite support, and this leads to complex and potentially unstable reconstruction algorithms. In this paper, we show that many signals with a finite rate of innovation can be sampled and perfectly reconstructed using physically realizable kernels of compact support and a local reconstruction algorithm. The class of kernels that we can use is very rich and includes functions satisfying Strang-Fix conditions, exponential splines and functions with rational Fourier transform. This last class of kernels is quite general and includes, for instance, any linear electric circuit. We, thus, show with an example how to estimate a signal of finite rate of innovation at the output of an RC circuit. The case of noisy measurements is also analyzed, and we present a novel algorithm that reduces the effect of noise by oversampling The finite rate of innovation (FRI) principle is developed for sampling a class of non-bandlimited signals that have a finite number of degrees of freedom per unit of time, i.e., signals with FRI. This sampling scheme is later extended to three classes of sampling kernels with compact support and applied to the step edge reconstruction problem by treating the image row by row. In this paper, we regard step edges as 2D FRI signals and reconstruct them block by block. The step edge parameters are obtained from the 2D moments of a given image block. Experimentally, our technique can reconstruct the edge more precisely and track the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) closely with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) larger than 4 dB on synthetic step edge images. Experiments on real images show that our proposed method can reconstruct the step edges under practical conditions, i.e., in the presence of various types of noise and using a real sampling kernel. The results on locating the corners of data matrix barcodes using our method also outperform some state-of-the-art barcode decoders. The authors consider classes of signals that have a finite number of degrees of freedom per unit of time and call this number the rate of innovation. Examples of signals with a finite rate of innovation include streams of Diracs (e.g., the Poisson process), nonuniform splines, and piecewise polynomials. Even though these signals are not bandlimited, we show that they can be sampled uniformly at (or above) the rate of innovation using an appropriate kernel and then be perfectly reconstructed. Thus, we prove sampling theorems for classes of signals and kernels that generalize the classic "bandlimited and sinc kernel" case. In particular, we show how to sample and reconstruct periodic and finite-length streams of Diracs, nonuniform splines, and piecewise polynomials using sinc and Gaussian kernels. For infinite-length signals with finite local rate of innovation, we show local sampling and reconstruction based on spline kernels. The key in all constructions is to identify the innovative part of a signal (e.g., time instants and weights of Diracs) using an annihilating or locator filter: a device well known in spectral analysis and error-correction coding. This leads to standard computational procedures for solving the sampling problem, which we show through experimental results. Applications of these new sampling results can be found in signal processing, communications systems, and biological systems. In this paper, we consider the problem of sampling signals that are nonband-limited but have finite number of degrees of freedom per unit of time and call this number the rate of innovation. Streams of Diracs and piecewise polynomials are the examples of such signals, and thus are known as signals with finite rate of innovation (FRI). We know that the classical ("band-limited sine") sampling theory does not enable perfect reconstruction of such signals from their samples since they are not band-limited. However, the recent results on FRI sampling suggest that it is possible to sample and perfectly reconstruct such nonband-limited signals using a rich class of kernels. In this paper, we extend those results in higher dimensions using compactly supported kernels that reproduce polynomials (satisfy Strang-Fix conditions). In fact, the polynomial reproduction property of the kernel makes it possible to obtain the continuous moments of the signal from its samples. Using these moments and the annihilating filter method (Prony's method), the innovative part of the signal, and therefore, the signal itself is perfectly reconstructed. In particular, we present local (directional-derivatives-based) and global (complex-moments-based, Radon-transform-based) sampling schemes for classes of FRI signals such as sets of Diracs, bilevel, and planar polygons, quadrature domains (e.g., circles, ellipses, and cardioids), 2D polynomials with polygonal boundaries, and n-dimensional Diracs and convex polytopes. This work has been explored in a promising way in super-resolution algorithms and distributed compression, and might find its applications in photogrammetry, computer graphics, and machine vision.