POLYPHASE INTERPRETATION OF EMPIRICAL IMAGE INTERPOLATION

We observe several characteristics of empirical image interpolating algorithms and contribute four novel concepts and claims. First, we interpret well-known classification-based filtering algorithms in terms of their polyphase components. We examine the underlying principles behind the various fixed-scale linear interpolating kernels. Second, we conceptually extend the properties of the multiple filters to two dimensions to analyze frequency domain characteristics common to all empirically-designed interpolating filters. Third, we propose a general linear filter for image interpolation, which uses a universal magnitude response and zero-phase. Finally, the proposed filter is further generalized to support arbitrary scaling factors. We claim that at any scaling factor, the proposed algorithm yields low-complexity at a minimal loss of high image-quality with the ability to interpolate diverse image content.