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Efficient image super-resolution integration

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Abstract

The super-resolution (SR) problem is challenging due to the diversity of image types with little shared properties as well as the speed required by online applications, e.g., target identification. In this paper, we explore the merits and demerits of recent deep learning-based and conventional patch-based SR methods and show that they can be integrated in a complementary manner, while balancing the reconstruction quality and time cost. Motivated by this, we further propose an integration framework to take the results from FSRCNN and A+ methods as inputs and directly learn a pixel-wise mapping between the inputs and the reconstructed results using the Gaussian conditional random fields. The learned pixel-wise integration mapping is flexible to accommodate different upscaling factors. Experimental results show that the proposed framework can achieve superior SR performance compared with the state of the arts while being efficient.

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  1. http://www.gris.tu-darmstadt.de/research/visinf/software/index.en.htm.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for the insightful and constructive comments. This work is in part supported by an SRG grant from City University of Hong Kong (Ref. 7004889), and by NSFC grant from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Ref. 91748104, 61632006, 61425002, 61702194).

Funding

This study was funded by an SRG grant from City University of Hong Kong (Ref. 7004889), and by NSFC grant from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Ref. 91748104, 61632006, 61425002, 61702194).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

    Ke Xu, Xin Wang, Xin Yang, Qiang Zhang, Baocai Yin & Xiaopeng Wei

  2. South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Shengfeng He

  3. City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Ke Xu & Rynson W. H. Lau

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  1. Ke Xu
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  2. Xin Wang
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  3. Xin Yang
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  7. Xiaopeng Wei
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  8. Rynson W. H. Lau
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Correspondence to Xin Yang or Shengfeng He.

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Conflict of interest

Ke Xu, XinWang, Xin Yang, Shengfeng He, Qiang Zhang, Baocai Yin, Xiaopeng Wei and Rynson W.H. Lau declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Xu, K., Wang, X., Yang, X. et al. Efficient image super-resolution integration. Vis Comput 34, 1065–1076 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-018-1554-2

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