Uncertainty-driven mixture convolution and transformer network for remote sensing image super-resolution

Sci Rep. 2024 Apr 24;14(1):9435. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-59384-x.

Abstract

Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Transformer-based Networks have exhibited remarkable prowess in the realm of remote sensing image super-resolution (RSISR), delivering promising results in the field. Nevertheless, the effective fusion of the inductive bias inherent in CNNs and the long-range modeling capabilities encapsulated within the Transformer architecture remains a relatively uncharted terrain in the context of RSISR endeavors. Accordingly, we propose an uncertainty-driven mixture convolution and transformer network (UMCTN) to earn a performance promotion. Specifically, to acquire multi-scale and hierarchical features, UMCTN adopts a U-shape architecture. Utilizing the dual-view aggregation block (DAB) based residual dual-view aggregation group (RDAG) in both encoder and decoder, we solely introduce a pioneering dense-sparse transformer group (DSTG) into the latent layer. This design effectively eradicates the considerable quadratic complexity inherent in vanilla Transformer structures. Moreover, we introduce a novel uncertainty-driven Loss (UDL) to steer the network's attention towards pixels exhibiting significant variance. The primary objective is to elevate the reconstruction quality specifically in texture and edge regions. Experimental outcomes on the UCMerced LandUse and AID datasets unequivocally affirm that UMCTN achieves state-of-the-art performance in comparison to presently prevailing methodologies.