Application of the vector ε and ρ extrapolation methods in the acceleration of the Richardson–Lucy algorithm

Abstract The vector e and ρ extrapolation methods are applied in accelerating the convergence of the Richardson–Lucy (R–L) algorithm and its damped version. The theory and implementation are discussed in detail, and relevant numerical results are given, including the cases of noise-free images and images corrupted by the Poisson noise. The results show that the vector e and ρ extrapolations of 9 orders can speed the convergence quite efficiently, and the ρ (9) method is more powerful than the e (9) method for noisy degraded images. The extra computation burden due to the extrapolation is limited, and is well paid back by the accelerated convergence. The performances of these two methods are compared with the famous automatic acceleration method. For noise-free degraded images, the vector e (9) and ρ (9) methods are more stable than the automatic method. For noisy degraded images, the damped R–L algorithm accelerated by vector ρ (9) or automatic methods is more powerful, and the instability of the automatic method is restrained by the damping strategy. We explain the instability of the method in accelerating the normal R–L algorithm by the numerical noise due to its frequent applications in the run.