Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 2101.00150

Multi-Grid Back-Projection Networks

Abstract

Multi-Grid Back-Projection (MGBP) is a fully-convolutional network architecture that can learn to restore images and videos with upscaling artifacts. Using the same strategy of multi-grid partial differential equation (PDE) solvers this multiscale architecture scales computational complexity efficiently with increasing output resolutions. The basic processing block is inspired in the iterative back-projection (IBP) algorithm and constitutes a type of cross-scale residual block with feedback from low resolution references. The architecture performs in par with state-of-the-arts alternatives for regression targets that aim to recover an exact copy of a high resolution image or video from which only a downscale image is known. A perceptual quality target aims to create more realistic outputs by introducing artificial changes that can be different from a high resolution original content as long as they are consistent with the low resolution input. For this target we propose a strategy using noise inputs in different resolution scales to control the amount of artificial details generated in the output. The noise input controls the amount of innovation that the network uses to create artificial realistic details. The effectiveness of this strategy is shown in benchmarks and it is explained as a particular strategy to traverse the perception-distortion plane.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Pablo Navarrete Michelini, Wenbin Chen, Hanwen Liu, Dan Zhu, Xingqun Jiang. 2021-01-01. Multi-Grid Back-Projection Networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00150

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

VideoPulse: Neonatal heart rate and peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) estimation from contact free video

Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) enables contact free monitoring of vital signs and is especially valuable for neonates, since conventional methods often require sustained skin contact with adhesive probes that can irritate fragile skin and increase infection control burden. We present VideoPulse, a neonatal dataset and an end to end pipeline that estimates neonatal heart rate and peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) from facial video. VideoPulse contains 157 recordings totaling 2.6 hours from 52 neonates with diverse face orientations. Our pipeline performs face alignment and artifact aware supervision using denoised pulse oximeter signals, then applies 3D CNN backbones for heart rate and SpO2 regression with label distribution smoothing and weighted regression for SpO2. Predictions are produced in 2 second windows. On the NBHR neonatal dataset, we obtain heart rate MAE 2.97 bpm using 2 second windows (2.80 bpm at 6 second windows) and SpO2 MAE 1.69 percent. Under cross dataset evaluation, the NBHR trained heart rate model attains 5.34 bpm MAE on VideoPulse, and fine tuning an NBHR pretrained SpO2 model on VideoPulse yields MAE 1.68 percent. These results indicate that short unaligned neonatal video segments can support accurate heart rate and SpO2 estimation, enabling low cost non invasive monitoring in neonatal intensive care.

eess.IV

Synthetic Fingerprints for Children Under Four: Generation and Biometric Evaluation

Fingerprint recognition in children under four is of interest for longitudinal identity applications, but research in this age range is constrained by the limited availability and sensitivity of real fingerprint data. Synthetic data may provide a useful complementary resource if generated samples are carefully evaluated for biometric quality, similarity to the real training data, and identity diversity. This paper presents an evaluation and selection protocol for synthetic fingerprints generated from a small pediatric dataset. The protocol was applied to 32,000 candidates produced by an age-conditioned generator fine-tuned with 205 fingerprints from nine children. Candidates were evaluated using NFIQ 2, NBIS minutiae extrac-tion and matching, fingerprint-pattern classification, similarity to the complete real reference set, and pairwise similarity among retained synthetic samples. After candidate filtering and a final symmetric pairwise verification, 1,985 synthetic fingerprints remained. The youngest age group continued to produce retained samples within the sampling budget, whereas the oldest original age group produced 24 retained prints. A data-derived two-group age representation improved pattern-distribution agreement for the younger group. Repeated renderings of fixed synthetic iden-tities produced minutiae-based mated scores comparable to the real mated scores, although a DINOv2 texture representation showed substantially greater within-generator similarity. The results indicate that synthetic pediatric fingerprints can support controlled research use, but their evaluation should include both real-to-synthetic similarity and synthetic-to-synthetic diversity, and conclusions should remain specific to the matchers and measurements used.

eess.IV

Adaptive Color Grading

Independent control of tonescale regions (e.g., shadows, highlights) is essential for painters, photographers and cinematographers to bring 2D images to life. In image manipulation software this is most directly addressed by color grading modules, which use intensity thresholds to segment distinct illumination regions for local manipulation. In this work we develop an open source color grading tool and use it to annotate a large dataset of video frames with tonescale region thresholds. Using these thresholds we conduct modeling experiments with strategies based on both practitioners' conventional wisdom and machine learning. Results show that K-nearest neighbors is an effective prediction strategy, outperforming state-of-the-art end-to-end methods for image enhancement. This outcome demonstrates the benefit of focusing on a compact set of core parameters when modeling creative stylization processes. Our adaptive color grading interface and data are available at https://github.com/SamsungLabs/adaptive-color-grading.

eess.IV