"This book is well written...[and] should be of interest to anyone studying image reconstruction and to anyone in PDEs trying to see what kinds of modern applications abound for the subject." -Mathematical Reviews "This book is devoted to PDE's of elliptic and parabolic type associated to functionals having a linear growth in the gradient, with a special emphasis on the applications related to image restoration and nonlinear filters... The book is written with great care, paying also a lot of attention to the bibliographical and historical notes. It is a recommended reading for all researchers interested in this field." -Zentralblatt Math "The goal of this mongraph is to present general existence and uniqueness results for quasilinear parabolic equations whose operator is the subdifferential of a convex Lagrangian which has linear growth. Special emphasis is given to the case of the minimizing total variational flow for which the Neumann, Dirichlet, and Cauchy problem are discussed. The developed techniques apply to problems in continuum mechanics, image restoration and faceted crystal growth." ---Monatshefte fur Mathematik

• 1 Total Variation Based Image Restoration.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 Equivalence between Constrained and Unconstrained Restoration.- 1.3 The Partial Differential Equation Satisfied by the Minimum of (1.17).- 1.4 Algorithm and Numerical Experiments.- 1.5 Review of Numerical Methods.- 2 The Neumann Problem for the Total Variation Flow.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Strong Solutions in L2(?).- 2.3 The Semigroup Solution in L1(?).- 2.4 Existence and Uniqueness of Weak Solutions.- 2.5 An LN-L? Regularizing Effect.- 2.6 Asymptotic Behaviour of Solutions.- 2.7 Regularity of the Level Lines.- 3 The Total Variation Flow in ?N.- 3.1 Initial Conditions in L2(?N).- 3.2 The Notion of Entropy Solution.- 3.3 Uniqueness in Ló(?N).- 3.4 Existence in Lloc1.- 3.5 Initial Conditions in L2(?N).- 3.6 Time Regularity.- 3.7 An LN-L? Regularizing Effect.- 3.8 Measure Initial Conditions.- 4 Asymptotic Behaviour and Qualitative Properties of Solutions.- 4.1 Radially Symmetric Explicit Solutions.- 4.2 Some Qualitative Properties.- 4.3 Asymptotic Behaviour.- 4.4 Evolution of Sets in ?2: The Connected Case.- 4.5 Evolution of Sets in ?2: The Nonconnected Case.- 4.6 Some Examples.- 4.7 Explicit Solutions for the Denoising Problem.- 5 The Dirichlet Problem for the Total Variation Flow.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Definitions and Preliminary Facts.- 5.3 The Main Result.- 5.4 The Semigroup Solution.- 5.5 Strong Solutions for Data in L2(?).- 5.6 Existence and Uniqueness for Data in L1(?).- 5.7 Regularity for Positive Initial Data.- 6 Parabolic Equations Minimizing Linear Growth Functionals: L2-Theory.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Preliminaries.- 6.3 The Existence and Uniqueness Result.- 6.4 Strong Solution for Data in L2(?)).- 6.5 Asymptotic Behaviour.- 6.6 Proof of the Approximation Lemma.- 7Parabolic Equations Minimizing Linear Growth Functionals: L1-Theory.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 The Main Result.- 7.3 The Semigroup Solution.- 7.4 Existence and Uniqueness for Data in L1(?).- 7.5 A Remark for Strictly Convex Lagrangians.- 7.6 The Cauchy Problem.- A Nonlinear Semigroups.- A.1 Introduction.- A.2 Abstract Cauchy Problem.- A.3 Mild Solutions.- A.4 Accretive Operators.- A.5 Existence and Uniqueness Theorem.- A.6 Regularity of Mild Solutions.- A.7 Completely Accretive Operators.- B Functions of Bounded Variation.- B.2 Approximation by Smooth Functions.- B.3 Traces and Extensions.- B.4 Sets of Finite Perimeter and the Coarea Formula.- B.5 Some Isoperimetric Inequalities.- B.6 The Reduced Boundary.- B.7 Connected Components of Sets of Finite Perimeter.- C Pairings Between Measures and Bounded Functions.- C.1 Trace of the Normal Component of Certain Vector Fields.- Dankwoord/ Acknowledgements.