Shear Let Transform Residual Learning Approach for Single-Image Super-Resolution

Super-resolution techniques are employed to enhance image resolution by reconstructing high-resolution images from one or more low-resolution inputs.Super-resolution is of paramount importance in the context of remote sensing,satellite,aerial,security and surveillance imaging.Super-resolution remote sensing imagery is essential for surveillance and security purposes,enabling authorities to monitor remote or sensitive areas with greater clarity.This study introduces a single-image super-resolution approach for remote sensing images,utilizing deep shearlet residual learning in the shearlet transform domain,and incorporating the Enhanced Deep Super-Resolution network(EDSR).Unlike conventional approaches that estimate residuals between high and low-resolution images,the proposed approach calculates the shearlet coefficients for the desired high-resolution image using the provided low-resolution image instead of estimating a residual image between the high-and low-resolution image.The shearlet transform is chosen for its excellent sparse approximation capabilities.Initially,remote sensing images are transformed into the shearlet domain,which divides the input image into low and high frequencies.The shearlet coefficients are fed into the EDSR network.The high-resolution image is subsequently reconstructed using the inverse shearlet transform.The incorporation of the EDSR network enhances training stability,leading to improved generated images.The experimental results from the Deep Shearlet Residual Learning approach demonstrate its superior performance in remote sensing image recovery,effectively restoring both global topology and local edge detail information,thereby enhancing image quality.Compared to other networks,our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of image quality,achieving an average peak signal-to-noise ratio of 35 and a structural similarity index measure of approximately 0.9.

Efficient 2-D MUSIC algorithm for super-resolution moving target tracking based on an FMCW radar

Frequency modulated continuous wave(FMCW)radar is an advantageous sensor scheme for target estimation and environmental perception.However,existing algorithms based on discrete Fourier transform(DFT),multiple signal classification(MUSIC)and compressed sensing,etc.,cannot achieve both low complexity and high resolution simultaneously.This paper proposes an efficient 2-D MUSIC algorithm for super-resolution target estimation/tracking based on FMCW radar.Firstly,we enhance the efficiency of 2-D MUSIC azimuth-range spectrum estimation by incorporating 2-D DFT and multi-level resolution searching strategy.Secondly,we apply the gradient descent method to tightly integrate the spatial continuity of object motion into spectrum estimation when processing multi-epoch radar data,which improves the efficiency of continuous target tracking.These two approaches have improved the algorithm efficiency by nearly 2-4 orders of magnitude without losing accuracy and resolution.Simulation experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the algorithm in both single-epoch estimation and multi-epoch tracking scenarios.

AFBNet: A Lightweight Adaptive Feature Fusion Module for Super-Resolution Algorithms

At present,super-resolution algorithms are employed to tackle the challenge of low image resolution,but it is difficult to extract differentiated feature details based on various inputs,resulting in poor generalization ability.Given this situation,this study first analyzes the features of some feature extraction modules of the current super-resolution algorithm and then proposes an adaptive feature fusion block(AFB)for feature extraction.This module mainly comprises dynamic convolution,attention mechanism,and pixel-based gating mechanism.Combined with dynamic convolution with scale information,the network can extract more differentiated feature information.The introduction of a channel spatial attention mechanism combined with multi-feature fusion further enables the network to retain more important feature information.Dynamic convolution and pixel-based gating mechanisms enhance the module’s adaptability.Finally,a comparative experiment of a super-resolution algorithm based on the AFB module is designed to substantiate the efficiency of the AFB module.The results revealed that the network combined with the AFB module has stronger generalization ability and expression ability.

Multi-prior physics-enhanced neural network enables pixel super-resolution and twin-imagefree phase retrieval from single-shot hologram

Digital in-line holographic microscopy(DIHM)is a widely used interference technique for real-time reconstruction of living cells’morphological information with large space-bandwidth product and compact setup.However,the need for a larger pixel size of detector to improve imaging photosensitivity,field-of-view,and signal-to-noise ratio often leads to the loss of sub-pixel information and limited pixel resolution.Additionally,the twin-image appearing in the reconstruction severely degrades the quality of the reconstructed image.The deep learning(DL)approach has emerged as a powerful tool for phase retrieval in DIHM,effectively addressing these challenges.However,most DL-based strategies are datadriven or end-to-end net approaches,suffering from excessive data dependency and limited generalization ability.Herein,a novel multi-prior physics-enhanced neural network with pixel super-resolution(MPPN-PSR)for phase retrieval of DIHM is proposed.It encapsulates the physical model prior,sparsity prior and deep image prior in an untrained deep neural network.The effectiveness and feasibility of MPPN-PSR are demonstrated by comparing it with other traditional and learning-based phase retrieval methods.With the capabilities of pixel super-resolution,twin-image elimination and high-throughput jointly from a single-shot intensity measurement,the proposed DIHM approach is expected to be widely adopted in biomedical workflow and industrial measurement.

PSMFNet:Lightweight Partial Separation and Multiscale Fusion Network for Image Super-Resolution

The employment of deep convolutional neural networks has recently contributed to significant progress in single image super-resolution(SISR)research.However,the high computational demands of most SR techniques hinder their applicability to edge devices,despite their satisfactory reconstruction performance.These methods commonly use standard convolutions,which increase the convolutional operation cost of the model.In this paper,a lightweight Partial Separation and Multiscale Fusion Network(PSMFNet)is proposed to alleviate this problem.Specifically,this paper introduces partial convolution(PConv),which reduces the redundant convolution operations throughout the model by separating some of the features of an image while retaining features useful for image reconstruction.Additionally,it is worth noting that the existing methods have not fully utilized the rich feature information,leading to information loss,which reduces the ability to learn feature representations.Inspired by self-attention,this paper develops a multiscale feature fusion block(MFFB),which can better utilize the non-local features of an image.MFFB can learn long-range dependencies from the spatial dimension and extract features from the channel dimension,thereby obtaining more comprehensive and rich feature information.As the role of the MFFB is to capture rich global features,this paper further introduces an efficient inverted residual block(EIRB)to supplement the local feature extraction ability of PSMFNet.A comprehensive analysis of the experimental results shows that PSMFNet maintains a better performance with fewer parameters than the state-of-the-art models.

Pyramid Separable Channel Attention Network for Single Image Super-Resolution

Single Image Super-Resolution(SISR)technology aims to reconstruct a clear,high-resolution image with more information from an input low-resolution image that is blurry and contains less information.This technology has significant research value and is widely used in fields such as medical imaging,satellite image processing,and security surveillance.Despite significant progress in existing research,challenges remain in reconstructing clear and complex texture details,with issues such as edge blurring and artifacts still present.The visual perception effect still needs further enhancement.Therefore,this study proposes a Pyramid Separable Channel Attention Network(PSCAN)for the SISR task.Thismethod designs a convolutional backbone network composed of Pyramid Separable Channel Attention blocks to effectively extract and fuse multi-scale features.This expands the model’s receptive field,reduces resolution loss,and enhances the model’s ability to reconstruct texture details.Additionally,an innovative artifact loss function is designed to better distinguish between artifacts and real edge details,reducing artifacts in the reconstructed images.We conducted comprehensive ablation and comparative experiments on the Arabidopsis root image dataset and several public datasets.The experimental results show that the proposed PSCAN method achieves the best-known performance in both subjective visual effects and objective evaluation metrics,with improvements of 0.84 in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio(PSNR)and 0.017 in Structural Similarity Index(SSIM).This demonstrates that the method can effectively preserve high-frequency texture details,reduce artifacts,and have good generalization performance.

Faster split-based feedback network for image super-resolution

Although most of the existing image super-resolution(SR)methods have achieved superior performance,contrastive learning for high-level tasks has not been fully utilized in the existing image SR methods based on deep learning.This work focuses on two well-known strategies developed for lightweight and robust SR,i.e.,contrastive learning and feedback mechanism,and proposes an integrated solution called a split-based feedback network(SPFBN).The proposed SPFBN is based on a feedback mechanism to learn abstract representations and uses contrastive learning to explore high information in the representation space.Specifically,this work first uses hidden states and constraints in recurrent neural network(RNN)to implement a feedback mechanism.Then,use contrastive learning to perform representation learning to obtain high-level information by pushing the final image to the intermediate images and pulling the final SR image to the high-resolution image.Besides,a split-based feedback block(SPFB)is proposed to reduce model redundancy,which tolerates features with similar patterns but requires fewer parameters.Extensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in comparison with the state-of-the-art methods.Moreover,this work extends the experiment to prove the effectiveness of this method and shows better overall reconstruction quality.

Contrastive Learning for Blind Super-Resolution via A Distortion-Specific Network

Previous deep learning-based super-resolution(SR)methods rely on the assumption that the degradation process is predefined(e.g.,bicubic downsampling).Thus,their performance would suffer from deterioration if the real degradation is not consistent with the assumption.To deal with real-world scenarios,existing blind SR methods are committed to estimating both the degradation and the super-resolved image with an extra loss or iterative scheme.However,degradation estimation that requires more computation would result in limited SR performance due to the accumulated estimation errors.In this paper,we propose a contrastive regularization built upon contrastive learning to exploit both the information of blurry images and clear images as negative and positive samples,respectively.Contrastive regularization ensures that the restored image is pulled closer to the clear image and pushed far away from the blurry image in the representation space.Furthermore,instead of estimating the degradation,we extract global statistical prior information to capture the character of the distortion.Considering the coupling between the degradation and the low-resolution image,we embed the global prior into the distortion-specific SR network to make our method adaptive to the changes of distortions.We term our distortion-specific network with contrastive regularization as CRDNet.The extensive experiments on synthetic and realworld scenes demonstrate that our lightweight CRDNet surpasses state-of-the-art blind super-resolution approaches.

Super-resolution reconstruction for license plate images of moving vehicles

A novel reconstruction method to improve the recognition of license plate texts of moving vehicles in real traffic videos is proposed, which fuses complimentary information among low resolution （LR） images to yield a high resolution （HR） image. Based on the regularization super-resolution （SR） reconstruction schemes, this paper first introduces a residual gradient （RG） term as a new regularization term to improve the quality of the reconstructed image. Moreover, L1 norm is used to measure the residual data （RD） term and the RG term in order to improve the robustness of the proposed method. Finally, the steepest descent method is exploited to solve the energy functional. Simulated and real acquired video sequence experiments show the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method and demonstrate its superiority over the bi-cubic interpolation and discontinuity adaptive Markov random field （DAMRF） SR method in both signal to noise ratios （SNR） and visual effects.

Research on single image super-resolution based on very deep super-resolution convolutional neural network

Single image super-resolution(SISR)is a fundamentally challenging problem because a low-resolution(LR)image can correspond to a set of high-resolution(HR)images,while most are not expected.Recently,SISR can be achieved by a deep learning-based method.By constructing a very deep super-resolution convolutional neural network(VDSRCNN),the LR images can be improved to HR images.This study mainly achieves two objectives:image super-resolution(ISR)and deblurring the image from VDSRCNN.Firstly,by analyzing ISR,we modify different training parameters to test the performance of VDSRCNN.Secondly,we add the motion blurred images to the training set to optimize the performance of VDSRCNN.Finally,we use image quality indexes to evaluate the difference between the images from classical methods and VDSRCNN.The results indicate that the VDSRCNN performs better in generating HR images from LR images using the optimized VDSRCNN in a proper method.

Single frame super-resolution reconstruction based on sparse representation

In order to effectively improve the quality of recovered images, a single frame super-resolution reconstruction method based on sparse representation is proposed. The combination method of local orientation estimation-based image patch clustering and principal component analysis is used to obtain a series of geometric dictionaries of different orientations in the dictionary learning process. Subsequently, the dictionary of the nearest orientation is adaptively assigned to each of the input patches that need to be represented in the sparse coding process. Moreover, the consistency of gradients is further incorporated into the basic framework to make more substantial progress in preserving more fine edges and producing sharper results. Two groups of experiments on different types of natural images indicate that the proposed method outperforms some state-of- the-art counterparts in terms of both numerical indicators and visual quality.

Lightweight Image Super-Resolution via Weighted Multi-Scale Residual Network

The tradeoff between efficiency and model size of the convolutional neural network(CNN)is an essential issue for applications of CNN-based algorithms to diverse real-world tasks.Although deep learning-based methods have achieved significant improvements in image super-resolution(SR),current CNNbased techniques mainly contain massive parameters and a high computational complexity,limiting their practical applications.In this paper,we present a fast and lightweight framework,named weighted multi-scale residual network(WMRN),for a better tradeoff between SR performance and computational efficiency.With the modified residual structure,depthwise separable convolutions(DS Convs)are employed to improve convolutional operations’efficiency.Furthermore,several weighted multi-scale residual blocks(WMRBs)are stacked to enhance the multi-scale representation capability.In the reconstruction subnetwork,a group of Conv layers are introduced to filter feature maps to reconstruct the final high-quality image.Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed model,and the comparative results with several state-of-the-art algorithms demonstrate the effectiveness of WMRN.

A Review of Clinical Applications for Super-resolution Ultrasound Localization Microscopy

Microvascular structure and hemodynamics are important indicators for the diagnosis and assessment of many diseases and pathologies.The structural and functional imaging of tissue microvasculature in vivo is a clinically significant objective for the development of many imaging modalities.Contrast-enhanced ultrasound(CEUS)is a popular clinical tool for characterizing tissue microvasculature,due to the moderate cost,wide accessibility,and absence of ionizing radiation of ultrasound.

QPSO-based algorithm of CSO joint infrared super-resolution and trajectory estimation

The midcourse ballistic closely spaced objects（CSO） create blur pixel-cluster on the space-based infrared focal plane,making the super-resolution of CSO quite necessary.A novel algorithm of CSO joint super-resolution and trajectory estimation is presented.The algorithm combines the focal plane CSO dynamics and radiation models,proposes a novel least square objective function from the space and time information,where CSO radiant intensity is excluded and initial dynamics（position and velocity） are chosen as the model parameters.Subsequently,the quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization（QPSO） is adopted to optimize the objective function to estimate model parameters,and then CSO focal plane trajectories and radiant intensities are computed.Meanwhile,the estimated CSO focal plane trajectories from multiple space-based infrared focal planes are associated and filtered to estimate the CSO stereo ballistic trajectories.Finally,the performance（CSO estimation precision of the focal plane coordinates,radiant intensities,and stereo ballistic trajectories,together with the computation load） of the algorithm is tested,and the results show that the algorithm is effective and feasible.

Hyperspectral Image Super-Resolution Meets Deep Learning:A Survey and Perspective

Hyperspectral image super-resolution,which refers to reconstructing the high-resolution hyperspectral image from the input low-resolution observation,aims to improve the spatial resolution of the hyperspectral image,which is beneficial for subsequent applications.The development of deep learning has promoted significant progress in hyperspectral image super-resolution,and the powerful expression capabilities of deep neural networks make the predicted results more reliable.Recently,several latest deep learning technologies have made the hyperspectral image super-resolution method explode.However,a comprehensive review and analysis of the latest deep learning methods from the hyperspectral image super-resolution perspective is absent.To this end,in this survey,we first introduce the concept of hyperspectral image super-resolution and classify the methods from the perspectives with or without auxiliary information.Then,we review the learning-based methods in three categories,including single hyperspectral image super-resolution,panchromatic-based hyperspectral image super-resolution,and multispectral-based hyperspectral image super-resolution.Subsequently,we summarize the commonly used hyperspectral dataset,and the evaluations for some representative methods in three categories are performed qualitatively and quantitatively.Moreover,we briefly introduce several typical applications of hyperspectral image super-resolution,including ground object classification,urban change detection,and ecosystem monitoring.Finally,we provide the conclusion and challenges in existing learning-based methods,looking forward to potential future research directions.

Single color image super-resolution using sparse representation and color constraint

Color image super-resolution reconstruction based on the sparse representation model usually adopts the regularization norm(e.g.,L1 or L2).These methods have limited ability to keep image texture detail to some extent and are easy to cause the problem of blurring details and color artifacts in color reconstructed images.This paper presents a color super-resolution reconstruction method combining the L2/3 sparse regularization model with color channel constraints.The method converts the low-resolution color image from RGB to YCbCr.The L2/3 sparse regularization model is designed to reconstruct the brightness channel of the input low-resolution color image.Then the color channel-constraint method is adopted to remove artifacts of the reconstructed highresolution image.The method not only ensures the reconstruction quality of the color image details,but also improves the removal ability of color artifacts.The experimental results on natural images validate that our method has improved both subjective and objective evaluation.

Image Super-Resolution Based on Generative Adversarial Networks: A Brief Review

Single image super resolution(SISR)is an important research content in the field of computer vision and image processing.With the rapid development of deep neural networks,different image super-resolution models have emerged.Compared to some traditional SISR methods,deep learning-based methods can complete the super-resolution tasks through a single image.In addition,compared with the SISR methods using traditional convolutional neural networks,SISR based on generative adversarial networks(GAN)has achieved the most advanced visual performance.In this review,we first explore the challenges faced by SISR and introduce some common datasets and evaluation metrics.Then,we review the improved network structures and loss functions of GAN-based perceptual SISR.Subsequently,the advantages and disadvantages of different networks are analyzed by multiple comparative experiments.Finally,we summarize the paper and look forward to the future development trends of GAN-based perceptual SISR.

Fast image super-resolution algorithm based on multi-resolution dictionary learning and sparse representation

Sparse representation has attracted extensive attention and performed well on image super-resolution（SR） in the last decade. However, many current image SR methods face the contradiction of detail recovery and artifact suppression. We propose a multi-resolution dictionary learning（MRDL） model to solve this contradiction, and give a fast single image SR method based on the MRDL model. To obtain the MRDL model, we first extract multi-scale patches by using our proposed adaptive patch partition method（APPM）. The APPM divides images into patches of different sizes according to their detail richness. Then, the multiresolution dictionary pairs, which contain structural primitives of various resolutions, can be trained from these multi-scale patches.Owing to the MRDL strategy, our SR algorithm not only recovers details well, with less jag and noise, but also significantly improves the computational efficiency. Experimental results validate that our algorithm performs better than other SR methods in evaluation metrics and visual perception.

Super-resolution reconstruction of synthetic-aperture radar image using adaptive-threshold singular value decomposition technique

A super-resolution reconstruction approach of （SVD） technique was presented, and its performance was radar image using an adaptive-threshold singular value decomposition analyzed, compared and assessed detailedly. First, radar imaging model and super-resolution reconstruction mechanism were outlined. Then, the adaptive-threshold SVD super-resolution algorithm, and its two key aspects, namely the determination method of point spread function （PSF） matrix T and the selection scheme of singular value threshold, were presented. Finally, the super-resolution algorithm was demonstrated successfully using the measured synthetic-aperture radar （SAR） images, and a Monte Carlo assessment was carried out to evaluate the performance of the algorithm by using the input/output signal-to-noise ratio （SNR）. Five versions of SVD algorithms, namely 1 ） using all singular values, 2） using the top 80% singular values, 3） using the top 50% singular values, 4） using the top 20% singular values and 5） using singular values s such that S2≥/max（s2）/rinsNR were tested. The experimental results indicate that when the singular value threshold is set as Smax/（rinSNR）1/2, the super-resolution algorithm provides a good compromise between too much noise and too much bias and has good reconstruction results.

Super-resolution imaging of low-contrast periodic nanoparticle arrays by microsphere-assisted microscopy

We use the label-free microsphere-assisted microscopy to image low-contrast hexagonally close-packed polystyrene nanoparticle arrays with diameters of 300 and 250 nm.When a nanoparticle array is directly placed on a glass slide,it cannot be distinguished.If a 30-nm-thick Ag film is deposited on the surface of a nanoparticle array,the nanoparticle array with nanoparticle diameters of 300 and 250 nm can be distinguished.In addition,the Talbot effect of the 300-nm-diameter nanoparticle array is also observed.If a nanoparticle sample is assembled on a glass slide deposited with a 30-nm-thick Ag film,an array of 300-nm-diameter nanoparticles can be discerned.We propose that in microsphere-assisted microscopy imaging,the resolution can be improved by the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons(SPPs) on the sample surface or at the sample/substrate interface,and a higher near-field intensity due to the excited SPPs would benefit the resolution improvement.Our study of label-free super-resolution imaging of low-contrast objects will promote the applications of microsphere-assisted microscopy in life sciences.