Generic Half-Quadratic Optimization for Image Reconstruction

We study the global and local convergence of a generic half-quadratic optimization algorithm inspired from the dual energy formulation of Geman and Reynolds [IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., 14 (1992), pp. 367-383]. The target application is the minimization of C-1 convex and nonconvex objective functionals arising in regularized image reconstruction. Our global convergence proofs are based on a monotone convergence theorem of Meyer [J. Comput. System Sci., 12 (1976), pp. 108-121]. Compared to existing results, ours extend to a larger class of objectives and apply under weaker conditions; in particular, we cover the case where the set of stationary points is not discrete. Our local convergence results use a majorization-minimization interpretation to derive an insightful characterization of the basins of attraction; this new perspective grounds a formal description of the intuitive water-flooding analogy. We conclude with image restoration experiments to illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm under various nonconvex scenarios.