MFFN: image super-resolution via multi-level features fusion network

• Published in: The Visual computer Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 489 - 504
• Main Authors: Chen, Yuantao, Xia, Runlong, Yang, Kai, Zou, Ke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.02.2024
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Graphics; Computer Science; Image Processing and Computer Vision; Original Article; Super-resolution; Residual learning; Lightweight; Multi-level features; Convolutional neural network
• ISSN: 0178-2789; 1432-2315
• DOI: 10.1007/s00371-023-02795-0

Deep convolutional neural networks can effectively improve the performance of single-image super-resolution reconstruction. Deep networks tend to achieve better performance than others. However, the deep CNNs will lead to a dramatic increase in the size of parameters, limiting its application on embedding and resource-constrained devices, such as smart phone. To address the common problems of blurred image edges, inflexible convolution kernel size selection and slow convergence during training procedure due to redundant network structure in image super-resolution algorithms, this paper proposes a lightweight single-image super-resolution network that fuses multi-level features. The components are mainly two-level nested residual blocks. To better extract features and reduce the number of parameters, each residual block adopts an asymmetric structure. Firstly, it expands twice and then compresses the number of channels twice. Secondly, in the residual block, the feature information of different channels is weighted and fused by adding an autocorrelation weight unit. The quality of the reconstructed image of the proposed method is superior to the existing image super-resolution reconstruction methods in both subjective perception and objective evaluation indicators, and the reconstruction performance is better when the factor is large.