Harmonic singular integrals and steerable wavelets in L2(Rd)L2(Rd)

Here we present a method of constructing steerable wavelet frames in L2(Rd)L2(Rd) that generalizes and unifies previous approaches, including Simoncelliʼs pyramid and Riesz wavelets. The motivation for steerable wavelets is the need to more accurately account for the orientation of data. Such wavelets can be constructed by decomposing an isotropic mother wavelet into a finite collection of oriented mother wavelets. The key to this construction is that the angular decomposition is an isometry, whereby the new collection of wavelets maintains the frame bounds of the original one. The general method that we propose here is based on partitions of unity involving spherical harmonics. A fundamental aspect of this construction is that Fourier multipliers composed of spherical harmonics correspond to singular integrals in the spatial domain. Such transforms have been studied extensively in the field of harmonic analysis, and we take advantage of this wealth of knowledge to make the proposed construction practically feasible and computationally efficient.