The equivalence of Fourier-based and Wasserstein metrics on imaging problems (Q2658509)

Summary: We investigate properties of some extensions of a class of Fourier-based probability metrics, originally introduced to study convergence to equilibrium for the solution to the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation. At difference with the original one, the new Fourier-based metrics are well-defined also for probability distributions with different centers of mass, and for discrete probability measures supported over a regular grid. Among other properties, it is shown that, in the discrete setting, these new Fourier-based metrics are equivalent either to the Euclidean-Wasserstein distance \(W_2\), or to the Kantorovich-Wasserstein distance \(W_1\), with explicit constants of equivalence. Numerical results then show that in benchmark problems of image processing, Fourier metrics provide a better runtime with respect to Wasserstein ones.