Uncovering the Over-smoothing Challenge in Image Super-Resolution: Entropy-based Quantification and Contrastive Optimization

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Hauptverfasser: Xu, Tianshuo, Li, Lijiang, Mi, Peng, Zheng, Xiawu, Chao, Fei, Ji, Rongrong, Tian, Yonghong, Shen, Qiang
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2022
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author Xu, Tianshuo
Li, Lijiang
Mi, Peng
Zheng, Xiawu
Chao, Fei
Ji, Rongrong
Tian, Yonghong
Shen, Qiang
author_facet Xu, Tianshuo
Li, Lijiang
Mi, Peng
Zheng, Xiawu
Chao, Fei
Ji, Rongrong
Tian, Yonghong
Shen, Qiang
contents PSNR-oriented models are a critical class of super-resolution models with applications across various fields. However, these models tend to generate over-smoothed images, a problem that has been analyzed previously from the perspectives of models or loss functions, but without taking into account the impact of data properties. In this paper, we present a novel phenomenon that we term the center-oriented optimization (COO) problem, where a model's output converges towards the center point of similar high-resolution images, rather than towards the ground truth. We demonstrate that the strength of this problem is related to the uncertainty of data, which we quantify using entropy. We prove that as the entropy of high-resolution images increases, their center point will move further away from the clean image distribution, and the model will generate over-smoothed images. Implicitly optimizing the COO problem, perceptual-driven approaches such as perceptual loss, model structure optimization, or GAN-based methods can be viewed. We propose an explicit solution to the COO problem, called Detail Enhanced Contrastive Loss (DECLoss). DECLoss utilizes the clustering property of contrastive learning to directly reduce the variance of the potential high-resolution distribution and thereby decrease the entropy. We evaluate DECLoss on multiple super-resolution benchmarks and demonstrate that it improves the perceptual quality of PSNR-oriented models. Moreover, when applied to GAN-based methods, such as RaGAN, DECLoss helps to achieve state-of-the-art performance, such as 0.093 LPIPS with 24.51 PSNR on 4x downsampled Urban100, validating the effectiveness and generalization of our approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2201_01034
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uncovering the Over-smoothing Challenge in Image Super-Resolution: Entropy-based Quantification and Contrastive Optimization
Xu, Tianshuo
Li, Lijiang
Mi, Peng
Zheng, Xiawu
Chao, Fei
Ji, Rongrong
Tian, Yonghong
Shen, Qiang
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
PSNR-oriented models are a critical class of super-resolution models with applications across various fields. However, these models tend to generate over-smoothed images, a problem that has been analyzed previously from the perspectives of models or loss functions, but without taking into account the impact of data properties. In this paper, we present a novel phenomenon that we term the center-oriented optimization (COO) problem, where a model's output converges towards the center point of similar high-resolution images, rather than towards the ground truth. We demonstrate that the strength of this problem is related to the uncertainty of data, which we quantify using entropy. We prove that as the entropy of high-resolution images increases, their center point will move further away from the clean image distribution, and the model will generate over-smoothed images. Implicitly optimizing the COO problem, perceptual-driven approaches such as perceptual loss, model structure optimization, or GAN-based methods can be viewed. We propose an explicit solution to the COO problem, called Detail Enhanced Contrastive Loss (DECLoss). DECLoss utilizes the clustering property of contrastive learning to directly reduce the variance of the potential high-resolution distribution and thereby decrease the entropy. We evaluate DECLoss on multiple super-resolution benchmarks and demonstrate that it improves the perceptual quality of PSNR-oriented models. Moreover, when applied to GAN-based methods, such as RaGAN, DECLoss helps to achieve state-of-the-art performance, such as 0.093 LPIPS with 24.51 PSNR on 4x downsampled Urban100, validating the effectiveness and generalization of our approach.
title Uncovering the Over-smoothing Challenge in Image Super-Resolution: Entropy-based Quantification and Contrastive Optimization
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.01034