OSFFNet: Omni-Stage Feature Fusion Network for Lightweight Image Super-Resolution
Abstract
Recently, several lightweight methods have been proposed to implement single-image super-resolution (SISR) on resource-constrained devices. However, these methods primarily focus on simplifying network structures without the full utilization of shallow features. The fact remains that shallow features encompass crucial details for the super-resolution task, including edges, textures, and colors. Therefore, developing a novel architecture that can effectively integrate features from different levels and capitalize on their mutual complementarity is necessary. We first analyze the relationship between multi-stage features and the restoration tasks in a classic lightweight SR method. Based on these observations, we propose an Omni-Stage Feature Fusion (OSFF) architecture, which incorporates Original Image Stacked Initialisation, Shallow Feature Global Connection, and Multi-Receptive Field Dynamic Fusion. An Attention-Enhanced Feature Distillation module is also designed to enhance the model performance. Finally, leveraging these contributions, we construct an Omni-Stage Feature Fusion Network (OSFFNet). Through extensive experiments on various benchmark datasets, the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Notably, it achieves a 0.26dB PSNR improvement over the second-best method for x2 SR on the Urban100 dataset.
BibTeX
@article{Wang_Zhang_2024, title={OSFFNet: Omni-Stage Feature Fusion Network for Lightweight Image Super-Resolution}, volume={38}, url={https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/28377}, DOI={10.1609/aaai.v38i6.28377}, abstractNote={Recently, several lightweight methods have been proposed to implement single-image super-resolution (SISR) on resource-constrained devices. However, these methods primarily focus on simplifying network structures without the full utilization of shallow features. The fact remains that shallow features encompass crucial details for the super-resolution task, including edges, textures, and colors. Therefore, developing a novel architecture that can effectively integrate features from different levels and capitalize on their mutual complementarity is necessary. We first analyze the relationship between multi-stage features and the restoration tasks in a classic lightweight SR method. Based on these observations, we propose an Omni-Stage Feature Fusion (OSFF) architecture, which incorporates Original Image Stacked Initialisation, Shallow Feature Global Connection, and Multi-Receptive Field Dynamic Fusion. An Attention-Enhanced Feature Distillation module is also designed to enhance the model performance. Finally, leveraging these contributions, we construct an Omni-Stage Feature Fusion Network (OSFFNet). Through extensive experiments on various benchmark datasets, the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Notably, it achieves a 0.26dB PSNR improvement over the second-best method for x2 SR on the Urban100 dataset.}, number={6}, journal={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, author={Wang, Yang and Zhang, Tao}, year={2024}, month={Mar.}, pages={5660-5668} }