Wavelet Losses Improve Quantitative and Visual Performance of Transformer-based Single Image Super-Resolution Models

Core Concepts

Training Transformer-based models for single image super-resolution using wavelet losses improves both quantitative (PSNR, SSIM) and visual performance compared to using only RGB pixel-wise losses.

Abstract

The paper proposes a new hybrid Transformer-based architecture for single image super-resolution (SR) that integrates convolutional non-local self-attention (NLSA) blocks with a Transformer-based model to expand the receptive field of the model. Additionally, the authors introduce a wavelet loss term for training the SR models, which enables them to better capture high-frequency image details and improve both PSNR and visual quality of the resulting SR images. The key highlights are: The proposed hybrid Transformer architecture sandwiches the state-of-the-art HAT model between NLSA blocks to further enhance the receptive field. Employing wavelet losses during training, in addition to the standard RGB pixel-wise losses, helps the model better reconstruct high-frequency details. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves state-of-the-art PSNR results as well as superior visual performance across various benchmark datasets for the ×4 SR task. The authors show that training other Transformer-based SR models, such as SwinIR, by wavelet losses also improves their performance. Ablation studies highlight the individual contributions of the NLSA blocks and the wavelet losses in enhancing the SR performance.

Stats

The paper reports PSNR and SSIM scores on several benchmark datasets for the ×4 SR task, including Set5, Set14, BSD100, and Urban100.

Quotes

"Training the proposed model by the wavelet loss not only improves the PSNR but also the visual quality of images." "The proposed framework is generic in the sense that any Transformer-based SR network can be plugged into this framework and trained by wavelet losses for better results."

Key Insights Distilled From

Training Transformer Models by Wavelet Losses Improves Quantitative and Visual Performance in Single Image Super-Resolution

by Cansu Korkma... at arxiv.org 04-18-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.11273.pdf

Deeper Inquiries

How can the proposed approach be extended to handle other low-level vision tasks beyond single image super-resolution, such as image denoising or image inpainting

The proposed approach can be extended to handle other low-level vision tasks beyond single image super-resolution by adapting the architecture and loss functions to suit the specific requirements of each task. For image denoising, the model can be trained to reconstruct clean images from noisy inputs by incorporating noise modeling in the loss function. This can involve adding a noise term to the wavelet loss to penalize deviations from the clean image. Additionally, for image inpainting, where missing parts of an image need to be filled in, the model can be trained to predict the missing pixels based on the surrounding context. This can be achieved by modifying the loss function to prioritize accurate reconstruction of the missing regions while maintaining consistency with the rest of the image. By customizing the architecture and loss functions accordingly, the proposed approach can be adapted to effectively address a variety of low-level vision tasks.

What are the potential limitations of the wavelet loss function, and how can it be further improved or combined with other loss terms to achieve an even better balance between quantitative and visual performance

The wavelet loss function, while effective in capturing high-frequency details essential for visually pleasing super-resolution results, may have limitations that could impact its performance. One potential limitation is the sensitivity of wavelet coefficients to small variations in the input image, which could lead to overfitting and loss of generalization capability. To address this, regularization techniques such as dropout or weight decay can be applied to prevent overfitting and improve model robustness. Additionally, the weighting of different wavelet subbands in the loss function may need to be carefully tuned to achieve a better balance between preserving high-frequency details and overall image quality. Combining the wavelet loss with perceptual loss functions based on features extracted from pre-trained deep neural networks like VGG or ResNet can help improve the perceptual quality of the super-resolved images. By integrating multiple loss terms and regularization techniques, a more comprehensive and balanced optimization objective can be formulated to enhance both quantitative metrics and visual performance in super-resolution tasks.

Given the success of the wavelet losses in enhancing Transformer-based SR models, how can the insights from this work be applied to improve the performance of other deep learning-based vision transformers in high-level tasks like image classification or object detection

The success of wavelet losses in enhancing Transformer-based SR models can be leveraged to improve the performance of other deep learning-based vision transformers in high-level tasks like image classification or object detection. One key insight is the importance of capturing multi-scale information for better representation learning. This can be applied to vision transformers by incorporating multi-scale features through hierarchical processing or parallel pathways within the network. Additionally, the idea of using wavelet coefficients to guide the training process can be extended to tasks like object detection, where capturing fine details is crucial. By integrating wavelet-based loss functions or feature extraction mechanisms into the training pipeline of vision transformers for object detection, the models can learn to focus on important details while maintaining a global context. Overall, the insights from this work can inspire new approaches to enhance the performance of vision transformers in various high-level vision tasks.