Concatenated image completion via tensor augmentation and completion

This paper proposes a novel framework called concatenated image completion via tensor augmentation and completion (ICTAC), which recovers missing entries of color images with high accuracy. Typical images are second- or third-order tensors (2D/3D) depending if they are grayscale or color, hence tensor completion algorithms are ideal for their recovery. The proposed framework performs image completion by concatenating copies of a single image that has missing entries into a third-order tensor, applying a dimensionality augmentation technique to the tensor, utilizing a tensor completion algorithm for recovering its missing entries, and finally extracting the recovered image from the tensor. The solution relies on two key components that have been recently proposed to take advantage of the tensor train (TT) rank: A tensor augmentation tool called ket augmentation (KA) that represents a low-order tensor by a higher-order tensor, and the algorithm tensor completion by parallel matrix factorization via tensor train (TMac-TT), which has been demonstrated to outperform state-of-the-art tensor completion algorithms. Simulation results for color image recovery show the clear advantage of our framework against current state-of-the-art tensor completion algorithms.