Clustering-Oriented Multiple Convolutional Neural Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution

In contrast to the human visual system (HVS) that applies different processing schemes to visual information of different textural categories, most existing deep learning models for image super-resolution tend to exploit an indiscriminate scheme for processing one whole image. Inspired by the human cognitive mechanism, we propose a multiple convolutional neural network framework trained based on different textural clusters of image local patches. To this end, we commence by grouping patches into K clusters via K-means, which enables each cluster center to encode image priors of a certain texture category. We then train K convolutional neural networks for super-resolution based on the K clusters of patches separately, such that the multiple convolutional neural networks comprehensively capture the patch textural variability. Furthermore, each convolutional neural network characterizes one specific texture category and is used for restoring patches belonging to the cluster. In this way, the texture variation within a whole image is characterized by assigning local patches to their closest cluster centers, and the super-resolution of each local patch is conducted via the convolutional neural network trained by its cluster. Our proposed framework not only exploits the deep learning capability of convolutional neural networks but also adapts them to depict texture diversities for super-resolution. Experimental super-resolution evaluations on benchmark image datasets validate that our framework achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity. Our multiple convolutional neural network framework provides an enhanced image super-resolution strategy over existing single-mode deep learning models

A critical analysis of self-supervision, or what we can learn from a single image

We look critically at popular self-supervision techniques for learning deep convolutional neural networks without manual labels. We show that three different and representative methods, BiGAN, RotNet and DeepCluster, can learn the first few layers of a convolutional network from a single image as well as using millions of images and manual labels, provided that strong data augmentation is used. However, for deeper layers the gap with manual supervision cannot be closed even if millions of unlabelled images are used for training. We conclude that: (1) the weights of the early layers of deep networks contain limited information about the statistics of natural images, that (2) such low-level statistics can be learned through self-supervision just as well as through strong supervision, and that (3) the low-level statistics can be captured via synthetic transformations instead of using a large image dataset.Comment: Accepted paper at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 202

Deep learning in remote sensing: a review

Standing at the paradigm shift towards data-intensive science, machine learning techniques are becoming increasingly important. In particular, as a major breakthrough in the field, deep learning has proven as an extremely powerful tool in many fields. Shall we embrace deep learning as the key to all? Or, should we resist a 'black-box' solution? There are controversial opinions in the remote sensing community. In this article, we analyze the challenges of using deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, review the recent advances, and provide resources to make deep learning in remote sensing ridiculously simple to start with. More importantly, we advocate remote sensing scientists to bring their expertise into deep learning, and use it as an implicit general model to tackle unprecedented large-scale influential challenges, such as climate change and urbanization.Comment: Accepted for publication IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazin

Joint-SRVDNet: Joint Super Resolution and Vehicle Detection Network

In many domestic and military applications, aerial vehicle detection and super-resolutionalgorithms are frequently developed and applied independently. However, aerial vehicle detection on super-resolved images remains a challenging task due to the lack of discriminative information in the super-resolved images. To address this problem, we propose a Joint Super-Resolution and Vehicle DetectionNetwork (Joint-SRVDNet) that tries to generate discriminative, high-resolution images of vehicles fromlow-resolution aerial images. First, aerial images are up-scaled by a factor of 4x using a Multi-scaleGenerative Adversarial Network (MsGAN), which has multiple intermediate outputs with increasingresolutions. Second, a detector is trained on super-resolved images that are upscaled by factor 4x usingMsGAN architecture and finally, the detection loss is minimized jointly with the super-resolution loss toencourage the target detector to be sensitive to the subsequent super-resolution training. The network jointlylearns hierarchical and discriminative features of targets and produces optimal super-resolution results. Weperform both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of our proposed network on VEDAI, xView and DOTAdatasets. The experimental results show that our proposed framework achieves better visual quality than thestate-of-the-art methods for aerial super-resolution with 4x up-scaling factor and improves the accuracy ofaerial vehicle detection