bikubiczna

Bikubiczna is the feminine form of the Polish adjective bikubiczny, used to describe concepts related to bicubic interpolation. In Polish technical writing, bikubiczna interpolacja denotes the bicubic interpolation method, commonly applied to image resizing and resampling due to its balance between quality and computational cost.

Conceptually, bicubic interpolation fits a cubic polynomial to the data points around the target location, using a 4x4 neighborhood. The value at a given coordinate is computed by convolving the image with a cubic kernel in x and y, often implemented as a separable two-stage process: interpolate in x across four samples, then interpolate the results in y. Popular kernels include Keys’ cubic, Catmull–Rom, and Mitchell–Netravali; each kernel defines different smoothness and sharpness characteristics.

Variants and terminology: while bikubiczna interpolacja refers to the general approach, specific implementations may be described as bicubic convolution or bicubic smoothing. The method is often contrasted with bilinear interpolation (using two points) and bicubic spline interpolation (smoother but more computationally intensive).

Applications and limitations: used in image processing, computer graphics, and video scaling. It produces smoother results than bilinear interpolation and preserves edges better, but can introduce ringing near strong edges and is more computationally expensive than bilinear. Quality depends on the chosen kernel and the underlying image content.

See also: Bilinear interpolation; Bicubic interpolation; Interpolation kernel; Image resampling.