Deep learning-based inpainting of saturation artifacts in optical coherence tomography images

Limited by the dynamic range of the detector,saturation artifacts usually occur in optical coherence tomography(OCT)imaging for high scattering media.The available methods are difficult to remove saturation artifacts and restore texture completely in OCT images.We proposed a deep learning-based inpainting method of saturation artifacts in this paper.The generation mechanism of saturation artifacts was analyzed,and experimental and simulated datasets were built based on the mechanism.Enhanced super-resolution generative adversarial networks were trained by the clear–saturated phantom image pairs.The perfect reconstructed results of experimental zebrafish and thyroid OCT images proved its feasibility,strong generalization,and robustness.

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.

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.

Common Artifacts and Remedies in Histological Preparations

The importance of the accuracy of preparing biological specimen as histological sections that can be examined under a microscope lies in reflecting a true image of the tissue that includes all its components, which are used in scientific research or for the purpose of diagnosing various diseases of the body. Despite this, some cellular structures within the tissue may suffer from some alterations that result from the appearance of defects during any stage of preparing these microscopic sections, which alter or interfere with the precise cellular structures and morphology that constitute the tissue and thus give a different image for tissue features and cause confusion in the work histopathologist in the diagnosis. There are several reasons that can cause a misdiagnosis of the sample that occurs during the surgical separation process or after separation during the stages of microscopic preparation techniques from fixation stage, tissue processing, embedding or microtomy, staining until mounting procedures. The constant need to identify these defects and their causes in addition to try to reduce them is one of the biggest challenges evident in pathology laboratories. Therefore, this study aims to review the most common defects that occur in any stage of tissue processing, with an explanation of their causes and appropriate ways to avoid them.

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.

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.

AI-Driven Prioritization and Filtering of Windows Artifacts for Enhanced Digital Forensics

Digital forensics aims to uncover evidence of cybercrimes within compromised systems.These cybercrimes are often perpetrated through the deployment of malware,which inevitably leaves discernible traces within the compromised systems.Forensic analysts are tasked with extracting and subsequently analyzing data,termed as artifacts,from these systems to gather evidence.Therefore,forensic analysts must sift through extensive datasets to isolate pertinent evidence.However,manually identifying suspicious traces among numerous artifacts is time-consuming and labor-intensive.Previous studies addressed such inefficiencies by integrating artificial intelligence(AI)technologies into digital forensics.Despite the efforts in previous studies,artifacts were analyzed without considering the nature of the data within them and failed to prove their efficiency through specific evaluations.In this study,we propose a system to prioritize suspicious artifacts from compromised systems infected with malware to facilitate efficient digital forensics.Our system introduces a double-checking method that recognizes the nature of data within target artifacts and employs algorithms ideal for anomaly detection.The key ideas of this method are:(1)prioritize suspicious artifacts and filter remaining artifacts using autoencoder and(2)further prioritize suspicious artifacts and filter remaining artifacts using logarithmic entropy.Our evaluation demonstrates that our system can identify malicious artifacts with high accuracy and that its double-checking method is more efficient than alternative approaches.Our system can significantly reduce the time required for forensic analysis and serve as a reference for future studies.

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.

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.

Fetal MRI Artifacts: Semi-Supervised Generative Adversarial Neural Network for Motion Artifacts Reducing in Fetal Magnetic Resonance Images

This study addresses challenges in fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) related to motion artifacts, maternal respiration, and hardware limitations. To enhance MRI quality, we employ deep learning techniques, specifically utilizing Cycle GAN. Synthetic pairs of images, simulating artifacts in fetal MRI, are generated to train the model. Our primary contribution is the use of Cycle GAN for fetal MRI restoration, augmented by artificially corrupted data. We compare three approaches (supervised Cycle GAN, Pix2Pix, and Mobile Unet) for artifact removal. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed supervised Cycle GAN effectively removes artifacts while preserving image details, as validated through Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) and normalized Mean Absolute Error (MAE). The method proves comparable to alternatives but avoids the generation of spurious regions, which is crucial for medical accuracy.

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.

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.

Improved spatiotemporal resolution of anti-scattering super-resolution label-free microscopy via synthetic wave 3D metalens imaging

Super-resolution(SR)microscopy has dramatically enhanced our understanding of biological processes.However,scattering media in thick specimens severely limits the spatial resolution,often rendering the images unclear or indistinguishable.Additionally,live-cell imaging faces challenges in achieving high temporal resolution for fast-moving subcellular structures.Here,we present the principles of a synthetic wave microscopy(SWM)to extract three-dimensional information from thick unlabeled specimens,where photobleaching and phototoxicity are avoided.SWM exploits multiple-wave interferometry to reveal the specimen’s phase information in the area of interest,which is not affected by the scattering media in the optical path.SWM achieves~0.42λ/NA resolution at an imaging speed of up to 106 pixels/s.SWM proves better temporal resolution and sensitivity than the most conventional microscopes currently available while maintaining exceptional SR and anti-scattering capabilities.Penetrating through the scattering media is challenging for conventional imaging techniques.Remarkably,SWM retains its efficacy even in conditions of low signal-to-noise ratios.It facilitates the visualization of dynamic subcellular structures in live cells,encompassing tubular endoplasmic reticulum(ER),lipid droplets,mitochondria,and lysosomes.

Residual Feature Attentional Fusion Network for Lightweight Chest CT Image Super-Resolution

The diagnosis of COVID-19 requires chest computed tomography(CT).High-resolution CT images can provide more diagnostic information to help doctors better diagnose the disease,so it is of clinical importance to study super-resolution(SR)algorithms applied to CT images to improve the reso-lution of CT images.However,most of the existing SR algorithms are studied based on natural images,which are not suitable for medical images;and most of these algorithms improve the reconstruction quality by increasing the network depth,which is not suitable for machines with limited resources.To alleviate these issues,we propose a residual feature attentional fusion network for lightweight chest CT image super-resolution(RFAFN).Specifically,we design a contextual feature extraction block(CFEB)that can extract CT image features more efficiently and accurately than ordinary residual blocks.In addition,we propose a feature-weighted cascading strategy(FWCS)based on attentional feature fusion blocks(AFFB)to utilize the high-frequency detail information extracted by CFEB as much as possible via selectively fusing adjacent level feature information.Finally,we suggest a global hierarchical feature fusion strategy(GHFFS),which can utilize the hierarchical features more effectively than dense concatenation by progressively aggregating the feature information at various levels.Numerous experiments show that our method performs better than most of the state-of-the-art(SOTA)methods on the COVID-19 chest CT dataset.In detail,the peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR)is 0.11 dB and 0.47 dB higher on CTtest1 and CTtest2 at×3 SR compared to the suboptimal method,but the number of parameters and multi-adds are reduced by 22K and 0.43G,respectively.Our method can better recover chest CT image quality with fewer computational resources and effectively assist in COVID-19.

A Hybrid Regularization-Based Multi-Frame Super-Resolution Using Bayesian Framework

The prime purpose for the image reconstruction of a multi-frame super-resolution is to reconstruct a higher-resolution image through incorporating the knowledge obtained from a series of relevant low-resolution images,which is useful in numerousfields.Nevertheless,super-resolution image reconstruction methods are usually damaged by undesirable restorative artifacts,which include blurring distortion,noises,and stair-casing effects.Consequently,it is always challenging to achieve balancing between image smoothness and preservation of the edges inside the image.In this research work,we seek to increase the effectiveness of multi-frame super-resolution image reconstruction by increasing the visual information and improving the automated machine perception,which improves human analysis and interpretation processes.Accordingly,we propose a new approach to the image reconstruction of multi-frame super-resolution,so that it is created through the use of the regularization framework.In the proposed approach,the bilateral edge preserving and bilateral total variation regularizations are employed to approximate a high-resolution image generated from a sequence of corresponding images with low-resolution to protect significant features of an image,including sharp image edges and texture details while preventing artifacts.The experimental results of the synthesized image demonstrate that the new proposed approach has improved efficacy both visually and numerically more than other approaches.

IRMIRS:Inception-ResNet-Based Network for MRI Image Super-Resolution

Medical image super-resolution is a fundamental challenge due to absorption and scattering in tissues.These challenges are increasing the interest in the quality of medical images.Recent research has proven that the rapid progress in convolutional neural networks(CNNs)has achieved superior performance in the area of medical image super-resolution.However,the traditional CNN approaches use interpolation techniques as a preprocessing stage to enlarge low-resolution magnetic resonance(MR)images,adding extra noise in the models and more memory consumption.Furthermore,conventional deep CNN approaches used layers in series-wise connection to create the deeper mode,because this later end layer cannot receive complete information and work as a dead layer.In this paper,we propose Inception-ResNet-based Network for MRI Image Super-Resolution known as IRMRIS.In our proposed approach,a bicubic interpolation is replaced with a deconvolution layer to learn the upsampling filters.Furthermore,a residual skip connection with the Inception block is used to reconstruct a high-resolution output image from a low-quality input image.Quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the proposed method are supported through extensive experiments in reconstructing sharper and clean texture details as compared to the state-of-the-art methods.

Artifacts in two-dimensional shear wave elastography of liver

BACKGROUND Artifacts are common when using two-dimensional shear wave elastography(2-D SWE)to measure liver stiffness(LS),but they are poorly recognized.AIM To investigate the presence and influence of artifacts in 2-D SWE of liver.METHODS We included 158 patients with chronic liver disease,who underwent 2-D SWE examination by a novice and an expert.A cross line at the center of the elastogram was drawn and was divided it into four locations:top-left,top-right,bottom-left,and bottom-right.The occurrence frequency of artifacts in different locations was compared.The influence of artifacts on the LS measurements was evaluated by comparing the elastogram with the most artifacts(EMA)and the elastogram with the least artifacts(ELA).RESULTS The percentage of elastograms with artifacts in the novice(51.7%)was significantly higher than that of the expert(19.6%)(P<0.001).It was found that both operators had the highest frequency of artifacts at bottom-left,followed by top-left and bottom-right,and top-right had the lowest frequency.The LS values(LSVs)and standard deviation values of EMAs were significantly higher than those of ELAs for both operators.An intraclass correlation coefficient value of 0.96 was found in the LSVs of EMAs of the two operators,and it increased to 0.98 when the LSVs of the ELAs were used.Both operators had lower stability index values for EMAs than ELAs,but the difference was only statistically significant for the novice.CONCLUSION Artifacts are common when using 2-D SWE to measure LS,especially for the novice.Artifacts may lead to the overestimation of LS and reduce the repeatability and reliability of LS measurements.

SOFFLFM:Super-resolution optical fluctuation Fourierlight-field microscopy

Fourier light-field microscopy(FLFM)uses a microlens aray(MLA)to segment the Fourierplane of the microscopic objective lens to generate multiple two-dimensional perspective views,thereby reconstructing the threedimensional(3D)structure of the sample using 3D deconvo-lution calculation without scanning.However,the resolution of FLFM is stil limited by dif-fraction,and furthermore,it is dependent on the aperture division.In order to improve itsresolution,a super-resolution opticai fuctuation Fourier light-field microscopy(SOFFLFM)wasproposed here,in which the super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging(SOFI)with the abilityof super-resolution was introduced into FLFM.SOFFLFM uses higher-order cumulants statis-tical analysis on an image sequence collected by FLFM,and then carries out 3D deconvolutioncalculation to reconstruct the 3D structure of the sample.The theoretical basis of SOFFLFM onimproving resolution was explained and then verified with the simulations.Simulation resultsdemonstrated that SOFFLFM improved the lateral and axial resolution by more than V2 and 2times in the second-and fourth-order accumulations,compared with that of FLFM.

Super-resolution parameter estimation of monopulse radar by wide-narrowband joint processing

The angular resolution of radar is of crucial signifi-cance to its tracking performance.In this paper,a super-resolu-tion parameter estimation algorithm based on wide-narrowband joint processing is proposed to improve the angular resolution of wideband monopulse radar.The range cells containing resolv-able scattering points are detected in the wideband mode,and these range cells are adopted to estimate part of the target parameters by algorithms of low computational requirement.Then,the likelihood function of the echo is constructed in the narrow-band mode to estimate the rest of the parameters,and the parameters estimated in the wideband mode are employed to reduce computation and enhance estimation accuracy.Simu-lation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has higher estimation accuracy and lower computational complexity than the current algorithm and can avoid the risk of model mis-match.

Investigations of moiréartifacts induced by flux fluctuations in x-ray dark-field imaging

X-ray dark-field imaging using a grating interferometer has shown potential benefits for a variety of applications in recent years.X-ray dark-field image is commonly retrieved by using discrete Fourier transform from the acquired phasestepping data.The retrieval process assumes a constant phase step size and a constant flux for each stepped grating position.However,stepping errors and flux fluctuations inevitably occur due to external vibrations and/or thermal drift during data acquisition.Previous studies have shown that those influences introduce errors in the acquired phase-stepping data,which cause obvious moiréartifacts in the retrieved refraction image.This work investigates moiréartifacts in x-ray dark-field imaging as a result of flux fluctuations.For the retrieved mean intensity,amplitude,visibility and dark-field images,the dependence of moiréartifacts on flux fluctuation factors is theoretically derived respectively by using a first-order Taylor series expansion.Results of synchrotron radiation experiments verify the validity of the derived analytical formulas.The spatial frequency characteristics of moiréartifacts are analyzed and compared to those induced by phase-stepping errors.It illustrates that moiréartifacts can be estimated by a weighted mean of flux fluctuation factors,with the weighting factors dependent on the moiréphase and different greatly for each retrieved image.Furthermore,moiréartifacts can even be affected by object’s features not displayed in the particular contrast.These results can be used to interpret images correctly,identify sources of moiréartifacts,and develop dedicated algorithms to remove moiréartifacts in the retrieved multi-contrast images.