Enhanced CNN for image denoising

• Main Authors: Chunwei Tian, Yong Xu, Lunke Fei, Junqian Wang, Jie Wen, Nan Luo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2019-01-01
• Series: CAAI Transactions on Intelligence Technology
• Subjects: image restoration; image representation; learning (artificial intelligence); image denoising; neural nets; convolution; image restoration CNN; enhanced CNN; flexible architectures; deep convolutional neural networks; deep network architecture; Deeper networks; performance saturation; convolutional neural denoising network; residual learning; batch normalisation techniques; training difficulties; dilated convolutions; authors
• Online Access: https://digital-library.theiet.org/content/journals/10.1049/trit.2018.1054

Owing to the flexible architectures of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are successfully used for image denoising. However, they suffer from the following drawbacks: (i) deep network architecture is very difficult to train. (ii) Deeper networks face the challenge of performance saturation. In this study, the authors propose a novel method called enhanced convolutional neural denoising network (ECNDNet). Specifically, they use residual learning and batch normalisation techniques to address the problem of training difficulties and accelerate the convergence of the network. In addition, dilated convolutions are used in the proposed network to enlarge the context information and reduce the computational cost. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the ECNDNet outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for image denoising.