A Restoration Network as an Implicit Prior

Yuyang Hu, Mauricio Delbracio, Peyman Milanfar, Ulugbek Kamilov

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Keywords: computational imaging, inverse problems, deep learning, plug-and-play priors

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TL;DR: A new method and theory for using deep restoration networks as implicit priors for solving inverse problems.

Abstract: Image denoisers have been shown to be powerful priors for solving inverse problems in imaging. In this work, we introduce a generalization of these methods that allows any image restoration network to be used as an implicit prior. The proposed method uses priors specified by deep neural networks pre-trained as general restoration operators. The method provides a principled approach for adapting state-of-the-art restoration models for other inverse problems. Our theoretical result analyzes its convergence to a stationary point of a global functional associated with the restoration operator. Numerical results show that the method using a super-resolution prior achieves state-of-the-art performance both quantitatively and qualitatively. Overall, this work offers a step forward for solving inverse problems by enabling the use of powerful pre-trained restoration models as priors.

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Primary Area: optimization

Submission Number: 3810