Image up-sampling using the discrete wavelet transform

Image up-sampling is an effective technique, useful in today's digital image processing applications and rendering devices. In image up-sampling, an image is enhanced from a lower resolution to a higher resolution with the degree of enhancement depending upon application requirements. It is known that the traditional interpolation based approaches for up-sampling, such as the Bilinear or Bicubic interpolations, blur the resultant images along edges and image features. Furthermore, in color imagery, these interpolation-based up-sampling methods may have color infringing artifacts in the areas where the images contain sharp edges and fine textures. We present an interesting up-sampling algorithm based on the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The proposed method preserves much of the sharp edge features in the image, and lessens the amount of color artifacts. Effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated based on comparison of PSNR and DeltaE* ab quality metrics between the original and reconstructed images.