A joint deep-network-based image restoration algorithm for multi-degradations

In the procedures of image acquisition, compression, and transmission, captured images usually suffer from various degradations, such as low-resolution and compression distortion. Although there have been a lot of research done on image restoration, they usually aim to deal with a single degraded factor, ignoring the correlation of different degradations. To establish a restoration framework for multiple degradations, a joint deep-network-based image restoration algorithm is proposed in this paper. The proposed convolutional neural network is composed of two stages. Firstly, a de-blocking subnet is constructed, using two cascaded neural network. Then, super-resolution is carried out by a 20-layer very deep network with skipping links. Cascading these two stages forms a novel deep network. Experimental results on the Set5, Setl4 and BSD100 benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve better results, in terms of both the subjective and objective performances.