A standard model for image reconstruction involves the minimization of a data-fidelity term along with a regularizer, where the optimization is performed using proximal algorithms such as ISTA and ADMM. In plug-and-play (PnP) regularization, the proximal operator (associated with the regularizer) in ISTA and ADMM is replaced by a powerful image denoiser. Although PnP regularization works surprisingly well in practice, its theoretical convergence -- whether convergence of the PnP iterates is guaranteed and if they minimize some objective function -- is not completely understood even for simple linear denoisers such as nonlocal means. In particular, while there are works where either iterate or objective convergence is established separately, a simultaneous guarantee on iterate and objective convergence is not available for any denoiser to our knowledge. In this paper, we establish both forms of convergence for a special class of linear denoisers. Notably, unlike existing works where the focus is on symmetric denoisers, our analysis covers non-symmetric denoisers such as nonlocal means and almost any convex data-fidelity. The novelty in this regard is that we make use of the convergence theory of averaged operators and we work with a special inner product (and norm) derived from the linear denoiser; the latter requires us to appropriately define the gradient and proximal operators associated with the data-fidelity term. We validate our convergence results using image reconstruction experiments.
Plug-and-Play methods constitute a class of iterative algorithms for imaging problems where regularization is performed by an off-the-shelf denoiser. Although Plug-and-Play methods can lead to tremendous visual performance for various image problems, the few existing convergence guarantees are based on unrealistic (or suboptimal) hypotheses on the denoiser, or limited to strongly convex data terms. In this work, we propose a new type of Plug-and-Play methods, based on half-quadratic splitting, for which the denoiser is realized as a gradient descent step on a functional parameterized by a deep…
In this work we propose a new paradigm for designing fast plug-and-play (PnP) algorithms using dimensionality reduction techniques. Unlike existing approaches which utilize stochastic gradient iterations for acceleration, we propose novel multi-stage sketched gradient iterations which first perform downsampling dimensionality reduction in the image space, and then efficiently approximate the true gradient using the sketched gradient in the low-dimensional space. This sketched gradient scheme can also be naturally combined with PnP-SGD methods for further improvement on computational complexity…
In this work we propose an efficient stochastic plug-and-play (PnP) algorithm for imaging inverse problems. The PnP stochastic gradient descent methods have been recently proposed and shown improved performance in some imaging applications over standard deterministic PnP methods. However, current stochastic PnP methods need to frequently compute the image denoisers which can be computationally expensive. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new stochastic PnP-ADMM method which is based on introducing stochastic gradient descent inner-loops within an inexact ADMM framework. We provide the …
This paper presents a novel method for restoring digital videos via a Deep Plug-and-Play (PnP) approach. Under a Bayesian formalism, the method consists in using a deep convolutional denoising network in place of the proximal operator of the prior in an alternating optimization scheme. We distinguish ourselves from prior PnP work by directly applying that method to restore a digital video from a degraded video observation. This way, a network trained once for denoising can be repurposed for other video restoration tasks. Our experiments in video deblurring, super-resolution, and interpolation …
In this paper, we present an optimization algorithm based on an alternating projection method to solve the large-scale security constraint optimal power flow (SCOPF) problem in power systems. The SCOPF is first partitioned into sub-problems, which share common power components. The proposed algorithm is fundamentally a distributed computing algorithm, which optimizes power flow in each electrical bus. The output of the local optimization problem will be exchanged among neighboring buses for the overall solution for the whole power system. We performed the algorithm against a modified 14-bus po…
In this paper we study the DC power flow equations of a purely resistive DC power grid which consists of interconnected DC microgrids with constant-power loads. We present a condition on the power grid which guarantees the existence of a solution to the power flow equations. In addition, we present a condition for any microgrid in island mode which guarantees that the power grid remains feasible upon interconnection. These conditions provide a method to determine if a power grid remains feasible after the interconnection with a specific microgrid with constant-power loads. Although the present…
Considering the structure of dc Microgrids (MGs) composed of grid-forming/feeding converters, a hierarchical Plug-and-Play (PnP) voltage/current control architecture for MG clusters is proposed. In the primary level, a PnP voltage/current controller is proposed to achieve simultaneous voltage support and current feeding function according to local references. In addition, stabilizing controller is characterized by explicit inequalities which are only related to local parameters of a MG. In the secondary level, for the system with interconnection of MGs, a leader-based voltage/current distribut…
Washington University in St. Louis（圣路易斯华盛顿大学）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）
Plug-and-play priors (PnP) is a broadly applicable methodology for solving inverse problems by exploiting statistical priors specified as denoisers. Recent work has reported the state-of-the-art performance of PnP algorithms using pre-trained deep neural nets as denoisers in a number of imaging applications. However, current PnP algorithms are impractical in large-scale settings due to their heavy computational and memory requirements. This work addresses this issue by proposing an incremental variant of the widely used PnP-ADMM algorithm, making it scalable to large-scale datasets. We theoret…
