Convolutional Neural Network Combined with Half-Quadratic Splitting Method for Image Restoration

Generally, there are mainly two methods to solve the image restoration task in low-level computer vision, i.e., the model-based optimization method and the discriminative learning method. However, these two methods have clear advantages and disadvantages. For example, it is flexible for the model-based optimization method to handle different problems, but large quantity of computing time is required for better performance. The discriminative learning approach has high computing efficiency, but the application scope is seriously limited by the fixed training model. It would be better to combine the advantages of these two methods. Luckily, with the variable splitting techniques, we insert the trained convolutional neural network (CNN) for denoising as one model to the model-based optimization method to solve other image restoration problems (e.g., deblurring and super-resolution). Final experimental results show that our denoising network is able to provide strong prior information for image restoration tasks. The image restoration effects can reach or approximate the most advanced algorithm in such three tasks as denoising, deblurring, and super-resolution. Moreover, the algorithm proposed in this paper is also the most competitive in terms of computational efficiency.