Light Field Super-Resolution Via Graph-Based Regularization

Light field cameras capture the 3D information in a scene with a single exposure. This special feature makes light field cameras very appealing for a variety of applications: from post-capture refocus, to depth estimation and image-based rendering. However, light field cameras suffer by design from strong limitations in their spatial resolution, which should therefore be augmented by computational methods. On the one hand, off-the-shelf single-frame and multi-frame super-resolution algorithms are not ideal for light field data, as they do not consider its particular structure. On the other hand, the few super-resolution algorithms explicitly tailored for light field data exhibit significant limitations, such as the need to estimate an explicit disparity map at each view. In this work we propose a new light field super-resolution algorithm meant to address these limitations. We adopt a multi-frame alike super-resolution approach, where the complementary information in the different light field views is used to augment the spatial resolution of the whole light field. We show that coupling the multi-frame approach with a graph regularizer, that enforces the light field structure via nonlocal self similarities, permits to avoid the costly and challenging disparity estimation step for all the views. Extensive experiments show that the new algorithm compares favorably to the other state-of-the-art methods for light field super-resolution, both in terms of PSNR and visual quality.Comment: This new version includes more material. In particular, we added: a new section on the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm, experimental comparisons with a CNN-based super-resolution algorithm, and new experiments on a third datase

End-to-End Kernel Learning with Supervised Convolutional Kernel Networks

In this paper, we introduce a new image representation based on a multilayer kernel machine. Unlike traditional kernel methods where data representation is decoupled from the prediction task, we learn how to shape the kernel with supervision. We proceed by first proposing improvements of the recently-introduced convolutional kernel networks (CKNs) in the context of unsupervised learning; then, we derive backpropagation rules to take advantage of labeled training data. The resulting model is a new type of convolutional neural network, where optimizing the filters at each layer is equivalent to learning a linear subspace in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We show that our method achieves reasonably competitive performance for image classification on some standard "deep learning" datasets such as CIFAR-10 and SVHN, and also for image super-resolution, demonstrating the applicability of our approach to a large variety of image-related tasks.Comment: to appear in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS

Antipodally invariant metrics for fast regression-based super-resolution

Dictionary-based super-resolution (SR) algorithms usually select dictionary atoms based on the distance or similarity metrics. Although the optimal selection of the nearest neighbors is of central importance for such methods, the impact of using proper metrics for SR has been overlooked in literature, mainly due to the vast usage of Euclidean distance. In this paper, we present a very fast regression-based algorithm, which builds on the densely populated anchored neighborhoods and sublinear search structures. We perform a study of the nature of the features commonly used for SR, observing that those features usually lie in the unitary hypersphere, where every point has a diametrically opposite one, i.e., its antipode, with same module and angle, but the opposite direction. Even though, we validate the benefits of using antipodally invariant metrics, most of the binary splits use Euclidean distance, which does not handle antipodes optimally. In order to benefit from both the worlds, we propose a simple yet effective antipodally invariant transform that can be easily included in the Euclidean distance calculation. We modify the original spherical hashing algorithm with this metric in our antipodally invariant spherical hashing scheme, obtaining the same performance as a pure antipodally invariant metric. We round up our contributions with a novel feature transform that obtains a better coarse approximation of the input image thanks to iterative backprojection. The performance of our method, which we named antipodally invariant SR, improves quality (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and it is faster than any other state-of-the-art method.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Development Of A High Performance Mosaicing And Super-Resolution Algorithm

In this dissertation, a high-performance mosaicing and super-resolution algorithm is described. The scale invariant feature transform (SIFT)-based mosaicing algorithm builds an initial mosaic which is iteratively updated by the robust super resolution algorithm to achieve the final high-resolution mosaic. Two different types of datasets are used for testing: high altitude balloon data and unmanned aerial vehicle data. To evaluate our algorithm, five performance metrics are employed: mean square error, peak signal to noise ratio, singular value decomposition, slope of reciprocal singular value curve, and cumulative probability of blur detection. Extensive testing shows that the proposed algorithm is effective in improving the captured aerial data and the performance metrics are accurate in quantifying the evaluation of the algorithm

Recent Progress in Image Deblurring

This paper comprehensively reviews the recent development of image deblurring, including non-blind/blind, spatially invariant/variant deblurring techniques. Indeed, these techniques share the same objective of inferring a latent sharp image from one or several corresponding blurry images, while the blind deblurring techniques are also required to derive an accurate blur kernel. Considering the critical role of image restoration in modern imaging systems to provide high-quality images under complex environments such as motion, undesirable lighting conditions, and imperfect system components, image deblurring has attracted growing attention in recent years. From the viewpoint of how to handle the ill-posedness which is a crucial issue in deblurring tasks, existing methods can be grouped into five categories: Bayesian inference framework, variational methods, sparse representation-based methods, homography-based modeling, and region-based methods. In spite of achieving a certain level of development, image deblurring, especially the blind case, is limited in its success by complex application conditions which make the blur kernel hard to obtain and be spatially variant. We provide a holistic understanding and deep insight into image deblurring in this review. An analysis of the empirical evidence for representative methods, practical issues, as well as a discussion of promising future directions are also presented.Comment: 53 pages, 17 figure