  We propose a functional lifting-based convex relaxation of variational
problems with Laplacian-based second-order regularization. The approach rests
on ideas from the calibration method as well as from sublabel-accurate
continuous multilabeling approaches, and makes these approaches amenable for
variational problems with vectorial data and higher-order regularization, as is
common in image processing applications. We motivate the approach in the
function space setting and prove that, in the special case of absolute
Laplacian regularization, it encompasses the discretization-first
sublabel-accurate continuous multilabeling approach as a special case. We
present a mathematical connection between the lifted and original functional
and discuss possible interpretations of minimizers in the lifted function
space. Finally, we exemplarily apply the proposed approach to 2D image
registration problems.
