Single image super-resolution with non-local means and steering kernel regression

IEEE Trans Image Process. 2012 Nov;21(11):4544-56. doi: 10.1109/TIP.2012.2208977. Epub 2012 Jul 16.

Abstract

Image super-resolution (SR) reconstruction is essentially an ill-posed problem, so it is important to design an effective prior. For this purpose, we propose a novel image SR method by learning both non-local and local regularization priors from a given low-resolution image. The non-local prior takes advantage of the redundancy of similar patches in natural images, while the local prior assumes that a target pixel can be estimated by a weighted average of its neighbors. Based on the above considerations, we utilize the non-local means filter to learn a non-local prior and the steering kernel regression to learn a local prior. By assembling the two complementary regularization terms, we propose a maximum a posteriori probability framework for SR recovery. Thorough experimental results suggest that the proposed SR method can reconstruct higher quality results both quantitatively and perceptually.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Animals
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Databases, Factual
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods*
  • Regression Analysis
  • Reproducibility of Results