HighRes-net: Multi-Frame Super-Resolution by Recursive Fusion
Authors: Michel Deudon, Alfredo Kalaitzis, Md Rifat Arefin, Israel Goytom, Zhichao Lin, Kris Sankaran, Vincent Michalski, Samira E Kahou, Julien Cornebise, Yoshua Bengio
Keywords: multi-frame super-resolution, super-resolution, remote sensing, fusion, de-aliasing, deep learning, registration
TL;DR: The first deep learning approach to MFSR to solve registration, fusion, up-sampling in an end-to-end manner.
Abstract: Generative deep learning has sparked a new wave of Super-Resolution (SR) algorithms that enhance single images with impressive aesthetic results, albeit with imaginary details. Multi-frame Super-Resolution (MFSR) offers a more grounded approach to the ill-posed problem, by conditioning on multiple low-resolution views. This is important for satellite monitoring of human impact on the planet -- from deforestation, to human rights violations -- that depend on reliable imagery. To this end, we present HighRes-net, the first deep learning approach to MFSR that learns its sub-tasks in an end-to-end fashion: (i) co-registration, (ii) fusion, (iii) up-sampling, and (iv) registration-at-the-loss. Co-registration of low-res views is learned implicitly through a reference-frame channel, with no explicit registration mechanism. We learn a global fusion operator that is applied recursively on an arbitrary number of low-res pairs. We introduce a registered loss, by learning to align the SR output to a ground-truth through ShiftNet. We show that by learning deep representations of multiple views, we can super-resolve low-resolution signals and enhance Earth observation data at scale. Our approach recently topped the European Space Agency's MFSR competition on real-world satellite imagery.