Constrained Denoising, Empirical Bayes, and Optimal Transport

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Main Authors: Jaffe, Adam Quinn, Ignatiadis, Nikolaos, Sen, Bodhisattva
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Jaffe, Adam Quinn
Ignatiadis, Nikolaos
Sen, Bodhisattva
author_facet Jaffe, Adam Quinn
Ignatiadis, Nikolaos
Sen, Bodhisattva
contents In the statistical problem of denoising, Bayes and empirical Bayes methods can "overshrink" their output relative to the latent variables of interest. This work is focused on constrained denoising problems which mitigate such phenomena. At the oracle level, i.e., when the latent variable distribution is assumed known, we apply tools from the theory of optimal transport to characterize the solution to (i) variance-constrained, (ii) distribution-constrained, and (iii) general-constrained denoising problems. At the empirical level, i.e., when the latent variable distribution is not known, we use empirical Bayes methodology to estimate these oracle denoisers. Our approach is modular, and transforms any suitable (unconstrained) empirical Bayes denoiser into a constrained empirical Bayes denoiser. We prove explicit rates of convergence for our proposed methodologies, which both extend and sharpen existing asymptotic results that have previously considered only variance constraints. We apply our methodology in two applications: one in astronomy concerning the relative chemical abundances in a large catalog of red-clump stars, and one in baseball concerning minor- and major league batting skill for rookie players.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09986
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Constrained Denoising, Empirical Bayes, and Optimal Transport
Jaffe, Adam Quinn
Ignatiadis, Nikolaos
Sen, Bodhisattva
Methodology
Statistics Theory
In the statistical problem of denoising, Bayes and empirical Bayes methods can "overshrink" their output relative to the latent variables of interest. This work is focused on constrained denoising problems which mitigate such phenomena. At the oracle level, i.e., when the latent variable distribution is assumed known, we apply tools from the theory of optimal transport to characterize the solution to (i) variance-constrained, (ii) distribution-constrained, and (iii) general-constrained denoising problems. At the empirical level, i.e., when the latent variable distribution is not known, we use empirical Bayes methodology to estimate these oracle denoisers. Our approach is modular, and transforms any suitable (unconstrained) empirical Bayes denoiser into a constrained empirical Bayes denoiser. We prove explicit rates of convergence for our proposed methodologies, which both extend and sharpen existing asymptotic results that have previously considered only variance constraints. We apply our methodology in two applications: one in astronomy concerning the relative chemical abundances in a large catalog of red-clump stars, and one in baseball concerning minor- and major league batting skill for rookie players.
title Constrained Denoising, Empirical Bayes, and Optimal Transport
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09986