Noisy images are a challenge to image compression algorithms due to the inherent difficulty of compressing noise. As noise cannot easily be discerned from image details, such as high-frequency signals, its presence leads to extra bits needed for compression. Since the emerging learned image compression paradigm enables end-to-end optimization of codecs, recent efforts were made to integrate denoising into the compression model, relying on clean image features to guide denoising. However, these methods exhibit suboptimal performance under high noise levels, lacking the capability to generalize across diverse noise types. In this paper, we propose a novel method integrating a multi-scale denoiser comprising of Self Organizing Operational Neural Networks, for joint image compression and denoising. We employ contrastive learning to boost the network ability to differentiate noise from high frequency signal components, by emphasizing the correlation between noisy and clean counterparts. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method both in rate-distortion performance, and codec speed, outperforming the current state-of-the-art.
Tampere University（坦佩雷大学）；Qatar University（卡塔尔大学）；HUAWEI Technologies（华为技术）
Real-world blind denoising poses a unique image restoration challenge due to the non-deterministic nature of the underlying noise distribution. Prevalent discriminative networks trained on synthetic noise models have been shown to generalize poorly to real-world noisy images. While curating real-world noisy images and improving ground truth estimation procedures remain key points of interest, a potential research direction is to explore extensions to the widely used convolutional neuron model to enable better generalization with fewer data and lower network complexity, as opposed to simply usi…
Classical image denoising methods utilize the non-local self-similarity principle to effectively recover image content from noisy images. Current state-of-the-art methods use deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to effectively learn the mapping from noisy to clean images. Deep denoising CNNs manifest a high learning capacity and integrate non-local information owing to the large receptive field yielded by numerous cascade of hidden layers. However, deep networks are also computationally complex and require large data for training. To address these issues, this study draws the focus on the…
Tampere Universities（坦佩雷大学）；Qatar University（卡塔尔大学）
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have recently become a favored technique for image denoising due to its adaptive learning ability, especially with a deep configuration. However, their efficacy is inherently limited owing to their homogenous network formation with the unique use of linear convolution. In this study, we propose a heterogeneous network model which allows greater flexibility for embedding additional non-linearity at the core of the data transformation. To this end, we propose the idea of an operational neuron or Operational Neural Networks (ONN), which enables a flexible non-…
Discriminative learning based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) aims to perform image restoration by learning from training examples of noisy-clean image pairs. It has become the go-to methodology for tackling image restoration and has outperformed the traditional non-local class of methods. However, the top-performing networks are generally composed of many convolutional layers and hundreds of neurons, with trainable parameters in excess of several millions. We claim that this is due to the inherent linear nature of convolution-based transformation, which is inadequate for handling seve…
Pyramid Self-Contrastive Learning for Single-shot Test-time Ultrasound Image Denoising
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学电子与计算机工程系）；Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University（达特茅斯大学生物医学工程系）
Tampere Universities（坦佩雷大学）；Qatar University（卡塔尔大学）；HUAWEI Technologies（华为技术有限公司）
Despite their recent success on image denoising, the need for deep and complex architectures still hinders the practical usage of CNNs. Older but computationally more efficient methods such as BM3D remain a popular choice, especially in resource-constrained scenarios. In this study, we aim to find out whether compact neural networks can learn to produce competitive results as compared to BM3D for AWGN image denoising. To this end, we configure networks with only two hidden layers and employ different neuron models and layer widths for comparing the performance with BM3D across different AWGN n…
Image denoising has achieved unprecedented progress as great efforts have been made to exploit effective deep denoisers. To improve the denoising performance in realworld, two typical solutions are used in recent trends: devising better noise models for the synthesis of more realistic training data, and estimating noise level function to guide non-blind denoisers. In this work, we combine both noise modeling and estimation, and propose an innovative noise model estimation and noise synthesis pipeline for realistic noisy image generation. Specifically, our model learns a noise estimation model …
Modern applications such as self-driving cars and drones rely heavily upon robust object detection techniques. However, weather corruptions can hinder the object detectability and pose a serious threat to their navigation and reliability. Thus, there is a need for efficient denoising, deraining, and restoration techniques. Generative adversarial networks and transformers have been widely adopted for image restoration. However, the training of these methods is often unstable and time-consuming. Furthermore, when used for object detection (OD), the output images generated by these methods may pr…
Deep image denoising networks have achieved impressive success with the help of a considerably large number of synthetic train datasets. However, real-world denoising is a still challenging problem due to the dissimilarity between distributions of real and synthetic noisy datasets. Although several real-world noisy datasets have been presented, the number of train datasets (i.e., pairs of clean and real noisy images) is limited, and acquiring more real noise datasets is laborious and expensive. To mitigate this problem, numerous attempts to simulate real noise models using generative models ha…
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab（华为诺亚方舟实验室）
This paper is concerned with contrastive learning (CL) for low-level image restoration and enhancement tasks. We propose a new label-efficient learning paradigm based on residuals, residual contrastive learning (RCL), and derive an unsupervised visual representation learning framework, suitable for low-level vision tasks with noisy inputs. While supervised image reconstruction aims to minimize residual terms directly, RCL alternatively builds a connection between residuals and CL by defining a novel instance discrimination pretext task, using residuals as the discriminative feature. Our formul…
ASCON: Anatomy-aware Supervised Contrastive Learning Framework for Low-dose CT Denoising
Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University（复旦大学类脑智能科学与技术研究院）；School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Sichuan University（四川大学网络空间安全学院）
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)（法国国家科学研究中心）；Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (IINS)（跨学科神经科学研究所）；University of Bordeaux（波尔多大学）；Mechanobiology Institute（机械生物学研究所）；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）
Microscopy images often suffer from high levels of noise, which can hinder further analysis and interpretation. Content-aware image restoration (CARE) methods have been proposed to address this issue, but they often require large amounts of training data and suffer from over-fitting. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel framework for few-shot microscopy image denoising. Our approach combines a generative adversarial network (GAN) trained via contrastive learning (CL) with two structure preserving loss terms (Structural Similarity Index and Total Variation loss) to further improve t…
Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；Klinikum rechts der Isar（右伊萨尔医院）；University of Zurich（苏黎世大学）；Institut für KI und Informatik in der Medizin（医学人工智能与信息学研究所）；Imperial College London（伦敦帝国学院）
