Combining Markov Random Fields and Convolutional Neural Networks for Image Synthesis
This paper studies a combination of generative Markov random field (MRF) models and discriminatively trained deep convolutional neural networks (dCNNs) for synthesizing 2D images. The generative MRF acts on higher levels of a dCNN feature pyramid, controlling the image layout at an abstract level. We apply the method to both photographic and non photo realistic (artwork) synthesis tasks. The MRF regularizer prevents over excitation artifacts and reduces implausible feature mixtures common to previous dCNN inversion approaches, permitting synthesizing photographic content with increased visual plausibility. Unlike standard MRF based texture synthesis, the combined system can both match and adapt local features with considerable variability, yielding results far out of reach of classic generative MRF methods.
2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)