Deep convolutional neural networks perform better on images containing spatially invariant noise (synthetic noise); however, their performance is limited on real-noisy photographs and requires multiple stage network modeling. To advance the practicability of denoising algorithms, this paper proposes a novel single-stage blind real image denoising network (RIDNet) by employing a modular architecture. We use a residual on the residual structure to ease the flow of low-frequency information and apply feature attention to exploit the channel dependencies. Furthermore, the evaluation in terms of quantitative metrics and visual quality on three synthetic and four real noisy datasets against 19 state-of-the-art algorithms demonstrate the superiority of our RIDNet.
In this section, we present and discuss recent trends in the image denoising. Two notable denoising algorithms, NLM @cite_56 and BM3D @cite_62 , use self-similar patches. Due to theer sucess, many variants were proposed, including SADCT @cite_36 , SAPCA @cite_52 , NLB @cite_7 , and INLM @cite_60 which seek self-similar patches in different transform domains. Dictionary-based methods @cite_31 @cite_8 @cite_22 enforce sparsity by employing self-similar patches and learning over-complete dictionaries from clean images. Many algorithms @cite_54 @cite_15 @cite_32 investigated the maximum likelihood algorithm to learn a statistical prior, the Gaussian Mixture Model of natural patches or patch groups for patch restoration. Furthermore, Levin al @cite_51 and Chatterjee al @cite_43 , motivated external denoising @cite_55 @cite_26 @cite_61 @cite_27 by showing that an image can be recovered with negligible error by selecting reference patches from a clean external database. However, all of the external algorithms are class-specific.
@cite_61 @cite_62 @cite_26 @cite_22 @cite_7 @cite_60 @cite_36 @cite_8 @cite_54 @cite_15 @cite_55 @cite_52 @cite_32 @cite_56 @cite_43 @cite_27 @cite_31 @cite_51
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We propose a data-dependent denoising procedure to restore noisy images. Different from existing denoising algorithms which search for patches from either the noisy image or a generic database, the new algorithm finds patches from a database that contains relevant patches. We formulate the denoising problem as an optimal filter design problem and make two contributions. First, we determine the basis function of the denoising filter by solving a group sparsity minimization problem. The optimization formulation generalizes existing denoising algorithms and offers systematic analysis of the performance. Improvement methods are proposed to enhance the patch search process. Second, we determine the spectral coefficients of the denoising filter by considering a localized Bayesian prior. The localized prior leverages the similarity of the targeted database, alleviates the intensive Bayesian computation, and links the new method to the classical linear minimum mean squared error estimation. We demonstrate applications of the proposed method in a variety of scenarios, including text images, multiview images, and face images. Experimental results show the superiority of the new algorithm over existing methods. We propose a novel image denoising strategy based on an enhanced sparse representation in transform domain. The enhancement of the sparsity is achieved by grouping similar 2D image fragments (e.g., blocks) into 3D data arrays which we call "groups." Collaborative Altering is a special procedure developed to deal with these 3D groups. We realize it using the three successive steps: 3D transformation of a group, shrinkage of the transform spectrum, and inverse 3D transformation. The result is a 3D estimate that consists of the jointly filtered grouped image blocks. By attenuating the noise, the collaborative filtering reveals even the finest details shared by grouped blocks and, at the same time, it preserves the essential unique features of each individual block. The filtered blocks are then returned to their original positions. Because these blocks are overlapping, for each pixel, we obtain many different estimates which need to be combined. Aggregation is a particular averaging procedure which is exploited to take advantage of this redundancy. A significant improvement is obtained by a specially developed collaborative Wiener filtering. An algorithm based on this novel denoising strategy and its efficient implementation are presented in full detail; an extension to color-image denoising is also developed. The experimental results demonstrate that this computationally scalable algorithm achieves state-of-the-art denoising performance in terms of both peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjective visual quality. Where does the sparsity in image signals come from? Local and nonlocal image models have supplied complementary views toward the regularity in natural images — the former attempts to construct or learn a dictionary of basis functions that promotes the sparsity; while the latter connects the sparsity with the self-similarity of the image source by clustering. In this paper, we present a variational framework for unifying the above two views and propose a new denoising algorithm built upon clustering-based sparse representation (CSR). Inspired by the success of l 1 -optimization, we have formulated a double-header l 1 -optimization problem where the regularization involves both dictionary learning and structural structuring. A surrogate-function based iterative shrinkage solution has been developed to solve the double-header l 1 -optimization problem and a probabilistic interpretation of CSR model is also included. Our experimental results have shown convincing improvements over state-of-the-art denoising technique BM3D on the class of regular texture images. The PSNR performance of CSR denoising is at least comparable and often superior to other competing schemes including BM3D on a collection of 12 generic natural images. Recent state-of-the-art image denoising methods use nonparametric estimation processes for @math patches and obtain surprisingly good denoising results. The mathematical and experimental evidence of two recent articles suggests that we might even be close to the best attainable performance in image denoising ever. This suspicion is supported by a remarkable convergence of all analyzed methods. Still more interestingly, most patch-based image denoising methods can be summarized in one paradigm, which unites the transform thresholding method and a Markovian Bayesian estimation. As the present paper shows, this unification is complete when the patch space is assumed to be a Gaussian mixture. Each Gaussian distribution is associated with its orthonormal basis of patch eigenvectors. Thus, transform thresholding (or a Wiener filter) is made on these local orthogonal bases. In this paper a simple patch-based Bayesian method is proposed, which on the one hand keeps most interesting features of former metho... Recently, the NLMeans filter has been proposed by for the suppression of white Gaussian noise. This filter exploits the repetitive character of structures in an image, unlike conventional denoising algorithms, which typically operate in a local neighbourhood. Even though the method is quite intuitive and potentially very powerful, the PSNR and visual results are somewhat inferior to other recent state-of-the-art non-local algorithms, like KSVD and BM-3D. In this paper, we show that the NLMeans algorithm is basically the first iteration of the Jacobi optimization algorithm for robustly estimating the noise-free image. Based on this insight, we present additional improvements to the NLMeans algorithm and also an extension to noise reduction of coloured (correlated) noise. For white noise, PSNR results show that the proposed method is very competitive with the BM-3D method, while the visual quality of our method is better due to the lower presence of artifacts. For correlated noise on the other hand, we obtain a significant improvement in denoising performance compared to recent wavelet-based techniques. The shape-adaptive discrete cosine transform (SA-DCT) transform can be computed on a support of arbitrary shape, but retains a computational complexity comparable to that of the usual separable block-DCT (B-DCT). Despite the near-optimal decorrelation and energy compaction properties, application of the SA-DCT has been rather limited, targeted nearly exclusively to video compression. In this paper, we present a novel approach to image filtering based on the SA-DCT. We use the SA-DCT in conjunction with the Anisotropic Local Polynomial Approximation-Intersection of Confidence Intervals technique, which defines the shape of the transform's support in a pointwise adaptive manner. The thresholded or attenuated SA-DCT coefficients are used to reconstruct a local estimate of the signal within the adaptive-shape support. Since supports corresponding to different points are in general overlapping, the local estimates are averaged together using adaptive weights that depend on the region's statistics. This approach can be used for various image-processing tasks. In this paper, we consider, in particular, image denoising and image deblocking and deringing from block-DCT compression. A special structural constraint in luminance-chrominance space is also proposed to enable an accurate filtering of color images. Simulation experiments show a state-of-the-art quality of the final estimate, both in terms of objective criteria and visual appearance. Thanks to the adaptive support, reconstructed edges are clean, and no unpleasant ringing artifacts are introduced by the fitted transform We propose in this paper to unify two different approaches to image restoration: On the one hand, learning a basis set (dictionary) adapted to sparse signal descriptions has proven to be very effective in image reconstruction and classification tasks. On the other hand, explicitly exploiting the self-similarities of natural images has led to the successful non-local means approach to image restoration. We propose simultaneous sparse coding as a framework for combining these two approaches in a natural manner. This is achieved by jointly decomposing groups of similar signals on subsets of the learned dictionary. Experimental results in image denoising and demosaicking tasks with synthetic and real noise show that the proposed method outperforms the state of the art, making it possible to effectively restore raw images from digital cameras at a reasonable speed and memory cost. Learning good image priors is of utmost importance for the study of vision, computer vision and image processing applications. Learning priors and optimizing over whole images can lead to tremendous computational challenges. In contrast, when we work with small image patches, it is possible to learn priors and perform patch restoration very efficiently. This raises three questions - do priors that give high likelihood to the data also lead to good performance in restoration? Can we use such patch based priors to restore a full image? Can we learn better patch priors? In this work we answer these questions. We compare the likelihood of several patch models and show that priors that give high likelihood to data perform better in patch restoration. Motivated by this result, we propose a generic framework which allows for whole image restoration using any patch based prior for which a MAP (or approximate MAP) estimate can be calculated. We show how to derive an appropriate cost function, how to optimize it and how to use it to restore whole images. Finally, we present a generic, surprisingly simple Gaussian Mixture prior, learned from a set of natural images. When used with the proposed framework, this Gaussian Mixture Model outperforms all other generic prior methods for image denoising, deblurring and inpainting. We propose an image denoising method that ex- ploits nonlocal image modeling, principal component analysis (PCA), and local shape-adaptive anisotropic estimation. The nonlocal modeling is exploited by grouping similar image patches in 3-D groups. The denoising is performed by shrinkage of the spectrum of a 3-D transform applied on such groups. The effectiveness of the shrinkage depends on the ability of the transform to sparsely represent the true-image data, thus separating it from the noise. We propose to improve the sparsity in two aspects. First, we employ image patches (neighborhoods) which can have data-adaptive shape. Second, we propose PCA on these adaptive-shape neighborhoods as part of the employed 3-D transform. The PCA bases are obtained by eigenvalue decompo- sition of empirical second-moment matrices that are estimated from groups of similar adaptive-shape neighborhoods. We show that the proposed method is competitive and outperforms some of the current best denoising methods, especially in preserving image details and introducing very few artifacts. We propose a new measure, the method noise, to evaluate and compare the performance of digital image denoising methods. We first compute and analyze this method noise for a wide class of denoising algorithms, namely the local smoothing filters. Second, we propose a new algorithm, the nonlocal means (NL-means), based on a nonlocal averaging of all pixels in the image. Finally, we present some experiments comparing the NL-means algorithm and the local smoothing filters. Natural image modeling plays a key role in many vision problems such as image denoising. Image priors are widely used to regularize the denoising process, which is an illposed inverse problem. One category of denoising methods exploit the priors (e.g., TV, sparsity) learned from external clean images to reconstruct the given noisy image, while another category of methods exploit the internal prior (e.g., self-similarity) to reconstruct the latent image. Though the internal prior based methods have achieved impressive denoising results, the improvement of visual quality will become very difficult with the increase of noise level. In this paper, we propose to exploit image external patch prior and internal self-similarity prior jointly, and develop an external patch prior guided internal clustering algorithm for image denoising. It is known that natural image patches form multiple subspaces. By utilizing Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) learning, image similar patches can be clustered and the subspaces can be learned. The learned GMMs from clean images are then used to guide the clustering of noisypatches of the input noisy images, followed by a low-rank approximation process to estimate the latent subspace for image recovery. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method outperforms many state-of-the-art denoising algorithms such as BM3D and WNNM. In super-resolution (SR) reconstruction of images, regularization becomes crucial when insufficient number of measured low-resolution images is supplied. Beyond making the problem algebraically well posed, a properly chosen regularization can direct the solution toward a better quality outcome. Even the extreme case—a SR reconstruction from a single measured image—can be made successful with a well-chosen regularization. Much of the progress made in the past two decades on inverse problems in image processing can be attributed to the advances in forming or choosing the way to practice the regularization. A Bayesian point of view interpret this as a way of including the prior distribution of images, which sheds some light on the complications involved. This paper reviews an emerging powerful family of regularization techniques that is drawing attention in recent years—the example-based approach. We describe how examples can and have been used effectively for regularization of inverse problems, reviewing the main contributions along these lines in the literature, and organizing this information into major trends and directions. A description of the state-of-the-art in this field, along with supporting simulation results on the image scale-up problem are given. This paper concludes with an outline of the outstanding challenges this field faces today. The goal of natural image denoising is to estimate a clean version of a given noisy image, utilizing prior knowledge on the statistics of natural images. The problem has been studied intensively with considerable progress made in recent years. However, it seems that image denoising algorithms are starting to converge and recent algorithms improve over previous ones by only fractional dB values. It is thus important to understand how much more can we still improve natural image denoising algorithms and what are the inherent limits imposed by the actual statistics of the data. The challenge in evaluating such limits is that constructing proper models of natural image statistics is a long standing and yet unsolved problem. To overcome the absence of accurate image priors, this paper takes a non parametric approach and represents the distribution of natural images using a huge set of 1010 patches. We then derive a simple statistical measure which provides a lower bound on the optimal Bayesian minimum mean square error (MMSE). This imposes a limit on the best possible results of denoising algorithms which utilize a fixed support around a denoised pixel and a generic natural image prior. Our findings suggest that for small windows, state of the art denoising algorithms are approaching optimality and cannot be further improved beyond ∼ 0.1dB values.