Dual Autoencoder Network with Separable Convolutional Layers for Denoising and Deblurring Images

J Imaging. 2022 Sep 13;8(9):250. doi: 10.3390/jimaging8090250.

Abstract

A dual autoencoder employing separable convolutional layers for image denoising and deblurring is represented. Combining two autoencoders is presented to gain higher accuracy and simultaneously reduce the complexity of neural network parameters by using separable convolutional layers. In the proposed structure of the dual autoencoder, the first autoencoder aims to denoise the image, while the second one aims to enhance the quality of the denoised image. The research includes Gaussian noise (Gaussian blur), Poisson noise, speckle noise, and random impulse noise. The advantages of the proposed neural network are the number reduction in the trainable parameters and the increase in the similarity between the denoised or deblurred image and the original one. The similarity is increased by decreasing the main square error and increasing the structural similarity index. The advantages of a dual autoencoder network with separable convolutional layers are demonstrated by a comparison of the proposed network with a convolutional autoencoder and dual convolutional autoencoder.

Keywords: autoencoder; computer vision; convolutional neural network; deep learning; dual autoencoder; image denoising; image processing; machine learning; non-linear model; separable convolutional neural network.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.