Defocus blur is a physical consequence of the optical sensors used in most cameras. Although it can be used as a photographic style, it is commonly viewed as an image degradation modeled as the convolution of a sharp image with a spatially-varying blur kernel. Motivated by the advance of blur estimation methods in the past years, we propose a non-blind approach for image deblurring that can deal with spatially-varying kernels. We introduce two encoder-decoder sub-networks that are fed with the blurry image and the estimated blur map, respectively, and produce as output the deblurred (deconvolved) image. Each sub-network presents several skip connections that allow data propagation from layers spread apart, and also inter-subnetwork skip connections that ease the communication between the modules. The network is trained with synthetically blur kernels that are augmented to emulate blur maps produced by existing blur estimation methods, and our experimental results show that our method works well when combined with a variety of blur estimation methods.
Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学）；Wuhan University（武汉大学）
The defocus deblurring raised from the finite aperture size and exposure time is an essential problem in the computational photography. It is very challenging because the blur kernel is spatially varying and difficult to estimate by traditional methods. Due to its great breakthrough in low-level tasks, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been introduced to the defocus deblurring problem and achieved significant progress. However, they apply the same kernel for different regions of the defocus blurred images, thus it is difficult to handle these nonuniform blurred images. To this end, thi…
Tohoku University（东北大学）；RIKEN Center for AIP（理化学研究所人工智能中心）
In this paper, we consider the problem in defocus image deblurring. Previous classical methods follow two-steps approaches, i.e., first defocus map estimation and then the non-blind deblurring. In the era of deep learning, some researchers have tried to address these two problems by CNN. However, the simple concatenation of defocus map, which represents the blur level, leads to suboptimal performance. Considering the spatial variant property of the defocus blur and the blur level indicated in the defocus map, we employ the defocus map as conditional guidance to adjust the features from the inp…
Depth information is useful in many image processing applications. However, since taking a picture is a process of projection of a 3D scene onto a 2D imaging sensor, the depth information is embedded in the image. Extracting the depth information from the image is a challenging task. A guiding principle is that the level of blurriness due to defocus is related to the distance between the object and the focal plane. Based on this principle and the widely used assumption that Gaussian blur is a good model for defocus blur, we formulate the problem of estimating the spatially varying defocus blur…
City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学）；Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik（马克斯·普朗克信息学研究所）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）
Defocus deblurring is a challenging task due to the spatially varying nature of defocus blur. While deep learning approach shows great promise in solving image restoration problems, defocus deblurring demands accurate training data that consists of all-in-focus and defocus image pairs, which is difficult to collect. Naive two-shot capturing cannot achieve pixel-wise correspondence between the defocused and all-in-focus image pairs. Synthetic aperture of light fields is suggested to be a more reliable way to generate accurate image pairs. However, the defocus blur generated from light field dat…
MC-Blur: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Image Deblurring
Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）；Nanjing University（南京大学）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Rakuten Institute of Technology（乐天技术研究所）；Tencent（腾讯）；University of California at Merced（加州大学默塞德分校）
Depth from defocus and defocus deblurring from a single image are two challenging problems that are derived from the finite depth of field in conventional cameras. Coded aperture imaging is one of the techniques that is used for improving the results of these two problems. Up to now, different methods have been proposed for improving the results of either defocus deblurring or depth estimation. In this paper, a multi-objective function is proposed for evaluating and designing aperture patterns with the aim of improving the results of both depth from defocus and defocus deblurring. Pattern eval…
Defocus blur arises in images that are captured with a shallow depth of field due to the use of a wide aperture. Correcting defocus blur is challenging because the blur is spatially varying and difficult to estimate. We propose an effective defocus deblurring method that exploits data available on dual-pixel (DP) sensors found on most modern cameras. DP sensors are used to assist a camera's auto-focus by capturing two sub-aperture views of the scene in a single image shot. The two sub-aperture images are used to calculate the appropriate lens position to focus on a particular scene region and …
Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen（清华大学深圳研究院）；Boyan Technology DBA RayShaper China（博研科技（商业名称为RayShaper中国））
Consistent in-focus input imagery is an essential precondition for machine vision systems to perceive the dynamic environment. A defocus blur severely degrades the performance of vision systems. To tackle this problem, we propose a deep-learning-based framework estimating the kernel scale and orientation of the defocus blur to adjust lens focus rapidly. Our pipeline utilizes 3D ConvNet for a variable number of input hypotheses to select the optimal slice from the input stack. We use random shuffle and Gumbel-softmax to improve network performance. We also propose to generate synthetic defocuse…
Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology（南京信息工程大学）；Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）
Defocus blur always occurred in photos when people take photos by Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera(DSLR), giving salient region and aesthetic pleasure. Defocus blur Detection aims to separate the out-of-focus and depth-of-field areas in photos, which is an important work in computer vision. Current works for defocus blur detection mainly focus on the designing of networks, the optimizing of the loss function, and the application of multi-stream strategy, meanwhile, these works do not pay attention to the shortage of training data. In this work, to address the above data-shortage problem, we t…
We propose a novel end-to-end learning-based approach for single image defocus deblurring. The proposed approach is equipped with a novel Iterative Filter Adaptive Network (IFAN) that is specifically designed to handle spatially-varying and large defocus blur. For adaptively handling spatially-varying blur, IFAN predicts pixel-wise deblurring filters, which are applied to defocused features of an input image to generate deblurred features. For effectively managing large blur, IFAN models deblurring filters as stacks of small-sized separable filters. Predicted separable deblurring filters are a…
ONERA（法国航空航天实验室）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎-萨克雷大学）；Université Paris Descartes（巴黎笛卡尔大学）
Depth estimation is of critical interest for scene understanding and accurate 3D reconstruction. Most recent approaches in depth estimation with deep learning exploit geometrical structures of standard sharp images to predict corresponding depth maps. However, cameras can also produce images with defocus blur depending on the depth of the objects and camera settings. Hence, these features may represent an important hint for learning to predict depth. In this paper, we propose a full system for single-image depth prediction in the wild using depth-from-defocus and neural networks. We carry out …
Trinity College Dublin（都柏林圣三一学院）；Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul（南里奥格兰德州联邦大学）
This paper presents an edge-based defocus blur estimation method from a single defocused image. We first distinguish edges that lie at depth discontinuities (called depth edges, for which the blur estimate is ambiguous) from edges that lie at approximately constant depth regions (called pattern edges, for which the blur estimate is well-defined). Then, we estimate the defocus blur amount at pattern edges only, and explore an interpolation scheme based on guided filters that prevents data propagation across the detected depth edges to obtain a dense blur map with well-defined object boundaries.…
Recent work has shown impressive results on data-driven defocus deblurring using the two-image views available on modern dual-pixel (DP) sensors. One significant challenge in this line of research is access to DP data. Despite many cameras having DP sensors, only a limited number provide access to the low-level DP sensor images. In addition, capturing training data for defocus deblurring involves a time-consuming and tedious setup requiring the camera's aperture to be adjusted. Some cameras with DP sensors (e.g., smartphones) do not have adjustable apertures, further limiting the ability to pr…
South China University of Technology（华南理工大学）；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）
Defocus blur is one kind of blur effects often seen in images, which is challenging to remove due to its spatially variant amount. This paper presents an end-to-end deep learning approach for removing defocus blur from a single image, so as to have an all-in-focus image for consequent vision tasks. First, a pixel-wise Gaussian kernel mixture (GKM) model is proposed for representing spatially variant defocus blur kernels in an efficient linear parametric form, with higher accuracy than existing models. Then, a deep neural network called GKMNet is developed by unrolling a fixed-point iteration o…
A Novel Defocus-Blur Region Detection Approach Based on DCT Feature and PCNN Structure
Hazara University（哈扎拉大学）；Women University Swabi（斯瓦比女子大学）；Seoul National University（首尔大学）；Woosong University（又松大学）；Xiamen University Malaysia（马来西亚厦门大学）；Wrexham Glyndŵr University（雷克瑟姆格林多大学）；University of South Wales（南威尔士大学）
It is a challenging task to recover sharp image from a single defocus blurry image in real-world applications. On many modern cameras, dual-pixel (DP) sensors create two-image views, based on which stereo information can be exploited to benefit defocus deblurring. Despite the impressive results achieved by existing DP defocus deblurring methods, the misalignment between DP image views is still not studied, leaving room for improving DP defocus deblurring. In this work, we propose a Dual-Pixel Alignment Network (DPANet) for defocus deblurring. Generally, DPANet is an encoder-decoder with skip-c…
DOF-GS:Adjustable Depth-of-Field 3D Gaussian Splatting for Post-Capture Refocusing, Defocus Rendering and Blur Removal
State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, Peking University（通用人工智能国家重点实验室，北京大学）；School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Peking University（智能科学与技术学院，北京大学）；University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill（北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校）
Reproducing an all-in-focus image from an image with defocus regions is of practical value in many applications, eg, digital photography, and robotics. Using the output of some existing defocus map estimator, existing approaches first segment a de-focused image into multiple regions blurred by Gaussian kernels with different variance each, and then de-blur each region using the corresponding Gaussian kernel. In this paper, we proposed a blind deconvolution method specifically designed for removing defocus blurring from an image, by providing effective solutions to two critical problems: 1) sup…
Defocus Blur Detection(DBD) aims to separate in-focus and out-of-focus regions from a single image pixel-wisely. This task has been paid much attention since bokeh effects are widely used in digital cameras and smartphone photography. However, identifying obscure homogeneous regions and borderline transitions in partially defocus images is still challenging. To solve these problems, we introduce depth information into DBD for the first time. When the camera parameters are fixed, we argue that the accuracy of DBD is highly related to scene depth. Hence, we consider the depth information as the …
This paper proposes a novel deep learning approach for single image defocus deblurring based on inverse kernels. In a defocused image, the blur shapes are similar among pixels although the blur sizes can spatially vary. To utilize the property with inverse kernels, we exploit the observation that when only the size of a defocus blur changes while keeping the shape, the shape of the corresponding inverse kernel remains the same and only the scale changes. Based on the observation, we propose a kernel-sharing parallel atrous convolutional (KPAC) block specifically designed by incorporating the p…
University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Noah’s Ark Lab, Huawei Technologies（华为技术有限公司诺亚方舟实验室）；Huawei Cloud BU（华为云BU）
Moire artifacts are common in digital photography, resulting from the interference between high-frequency scene content and the color filter array of the camera. Existing deep learning-based demoireing methods trained on large scale datasets are limited in handling various complex moire patterns, and mainly focus on demoireing of photos taken of digital displays. Moreover, obtaining moire-free ground-truth in natural scenes is difficult but needed for training. In this paper, we propose a self-adaptive learning method for demoireing a high-frequency image, with the help of an additional defocu…
Koç University（科奇大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）
This paper introduces a new multiplane CGH computation method to reconstruct artefact-free high-quality holograms with natural-looking defocus blur. Our method introduces a new targeting scheme and a new loss function. While the targeting scheme accounts for defocused parts of the scene at each depth plane, the new loss function analyzes focused and defocused parts separately in reconstructed images. Our method support phase-only CGH calculations using various iterative (e.g., Gerchberg-Saxton, Gradient Descent) and non-iterative (e.g., Double Phase) CGH techniques. We achieve our best image q…
A shallow depth-of-field image keeps the subject in focus, and the foreground and background contexts blurred. This effect requires much larger lens apertures than those of smartphone cameras. Conventional methods acquire RGB-D images and blur image regions based on their depth. However, this approach is not suitable for reflective or transparent surfaces, or finely detailed object silhouettes, where the depth value is inaccurate or ambiguous. We present a learning-based method to synthesize the defocus blur in shallow depth-of-field images from handheld bursts acquired with a single small ape…
By adopting popular pixel-wise loss, existing methods for defocus deblurring heavily rely on well aligned training image pairs. Although training pairs of ground-truth and blurry images are carefully collected, e.g., DPDD dataset, misalignment is inevitable between training pairs, making existing methods possibly suffer from deformation artifacts. In this paper, we propose a joint deblurring and reblurring learning (JDRL) framework for single image defocus deblurring with misaligned training pairs. Generally, JDRL consists of a deblurring module and a spatially invariant reblurring module, by …
Indian Institute of Technology Madras（印度理工学院马德拉斯分校）
In depth from defocus (DFD), when images are captured with different camera parameters, a relative magnification is induced between them. Image warping is a simpler solution to account for magnification than seemingly more accurate optical approaches. This work is an investigation into the effects of magnification on the accuracy of DFD. We comment on issues regarding scaling effect on relative blur computation. We statistically analyze accountability of scale factor, commenting on the bias and efficiency of the estimator that does not consider scale. We also discuss the effect of interpolatio…
State-of-the-art video deblurring methods cannot handle blurry videos recorded in dynamic scenes, since they are built under a strong assumption that the captured scenes are static. Contrary to the existing methods, we propose a video deblurring algorithm that can deal with general blurs inherent in dynamic scenes. To handle general and locally varying blurs caused by various sources, such as moving objects, camera shake, depth variation, and defocus, we estimate pixel-wise non-uniform blur kernels. We infer bidirectional optical flows to handle motion blurs, and also estimate Gaussian blur ma…
Passive Defence R&D Dept. Tech. Deputy of Iranian Railways（伊朗铁路技术副主管被动防御研发部）
Image analysis methods that are based on exact blur values are faced with the computational complexities due to blur measurement error. This atmosphere encourages scholars to look for handcrafted and learned features for finding depth from a single image. This paper introduces a novel exact realization for blur measures on digital images and implements it on a new measure of defocus Gaussian blur at edge points in Depth From Defocus (DFD) methods with the potential to change this atmosphere. The experiments on real images indicate superiority of the proposed measure in error performance over c…
Xidian University（西安电子科技大学）；The University of Western Australia（西澳大学）
Convolutional neural networks have recently been used for multi-focus image fusion. However, due to the lack of labeled data for supervised training of such networks, existing methods have resorted to adding Gaussian blur in focused images to simulate defocus and generate synthetic training data with ground-truth for supervised learning. Moreover, they classify pixels as focused or defocused and leverage the results to construct the fusion weight maps which then necessitates a series of post-processing steps. In this paper, we present unsupervised end-to-end learning for directly predicting th…
Dark Channel-Assisted Depth-from-Defocus from a Single Image
Advanced Technology Development Center, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India（印度理工学院卡里格普分校高级技术发展中心）；department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India（印度理工学院卡里格普分校电子工程系）
We present a method that takes as input a single dual-pixel image, and simultaneously estimates the image's defocus map -- the amount of defocus blur at each pixel -- and recovers an all-in-focus image. Our method is inspired from recent works that leverage the dual-pixel sensors available in many consumer cameras to assist with autofocus, and use them for recovery of defocus maps or all-in-focus images. These prior works have solved the two recovery problems independently of each other, and often require large labeled datasets for supervised training. By contrast, we show that it is beneficia…
In recent years, the usefulness of 3D shape estimation is being realized in microscopic or close-range imaging, as the 3D information can further be used in various applications. Due to limited depth of field at such small distances, the defocus blur induced in images can provide information about the 3D shape of the object. The task of `shape from defocus' (SFD), involves the problem of estimating good quality 3D shape estimates from images with depth-dependent defocus blur. While the research area of SFD is quite well-established, the approaches have largely demonstrated results on objects w…
University of California, Berkeley, California, USA（加州大学伯克利分校）；NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA（美国航空航天局阿姆斯研究中心）；KBR, Houston, Texas, USA（KBR公司）
University of Padova（帕多瓦大学）；Sony Europe B.V.（索尼欧洲有限公司）
Monocular depth estimation is still an open challenge due to the ill-posed nature of the problem at hand. Deep learning based techniques have been extensively studied and proved capable of producing acceptable depth estimation accuracy even if the lack of meaningful and robust depth cues within single RGB input images severally limits their performance. Coded aperture-based methods using phase and amplitude masks encode strong depth cues within 2D images by means of depth-dependent Point Spread Functions (PSFs) at the price of a reduced image quality. In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-e…
Tencent AI Lab（腾讯AI实验室）；University of Connecticut（康涅狄格大学）；The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University（河北医科大学第四医院）；West China Hospital, Sichuan University（四川大学华西医院）
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered pathology is a revolutionary step in the world of digital pathology and shows great promise to increase both diagnosis accuracy and efficiency. However, defocus and motion blur can obscure tissue or cell characteristics hence compromising AI algorithms'accuracy and robustness in analyzing the images. In this paper, we demonstrate a deep-learning-based approach that can alleviate the defocus and motion blur of a microscopic image and output a sharper and cleaner image with retrieved fine details without prior knowledge of the blur type, blur extent and patho…
