  We address the denoising of images contaminated with multiplicative noise,
e.g. speckle noise. Classical ways to solve such problems are filtering,
statistical (Bayesian) methods, variational methods, and methods that convert
the multiplicative noise into additive noise (using a logarithmic function),
shrinkage of the coefficients of the log-image data in a wavelet basis or in a
frame, and transform back the result using an exponential function. We propose
a method composed of several stages: we use the log-image data and apply a
reasonable under-optimal hard-thresholding on its curvelet transform; then we
apply a variational method where we minimize a specialized criterion composed
of an $\ell^1$ data-fitting to the thresholded coefficients and a Total
Variation regularization (TV) term in the image domain; the restored image is
an exponential of the obtained minimizer, weighted in a way that the mean of
the original image is preserved. Our restored images combine the advantages of
shrinkage and variational methods and avoid their main drawbacks. For the
minimization stage, we propose a properly adapted fast minimization scheme
based on Douglas-Rachford splitting. The existence of a minimizer of our
specialized criterion being proven, we demonstrate the convergence of the
minimization scheme. The obtained numerical results outperform the main
alternative methods.
