Deep Networks With Detail Enhancement for Infrared Image Super-Resolution

Due to the limitation of hardware, infrared (IR) images have low-resolution (LR) and poor visual quality. Image super-resolution (SR) is a good solution to this problem. In this paper, we present a new convolution network (CNN) to improve the spatial resolution of infrared (IR) images. Our network is able to restore fine details by decomposing the input image into low-frequency and high-frequency domains. In low-frequency domains, we reconstruct image structure by deep networks. In high frequency domains, we reconstruct IR image details. Furthermore, we proposed another network to remove artifacts. Additionally, we propose a new loss function using visible (VIS) images to enhance the details of IR images. In training phase, we use VIS images to guide IR image restoration and in testing phase we get SR IR images with LR IR images input only. We optimize our deep network with a targeted function which penalizes images at different semantic levels using the corresponding terms. Besides, we build a dataset where paired LR-VIS images on the same scene are captured by a camera with both infrared and visible light sensors which both sensors have the same optical axis. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves superior performance and visual improvements against the state-of-the-arts.