SLVR: Super-Light Visual Reconstruction via Blueprint Controllable Convolutions and Exploring Feature Diversity Representation

Recently, improving the residual structure and designing efficient convolutions have become important branches of lightweight visual reconstruction model design. We have observed that the feature addition mode (FAM) in existing residual structure tends to lead to slow feature learning or stagnation in feature evolution, a phenomenon we define as network inertia. In addition, although blueprint separable convolutions (BSConv) have proved the dominance of intra-kernel correlation, BSConv forces the blueprint to perform scale transformation on all channels, which may lead to incorrect intra-kernel correlation and introduce useless or disruptive features on some channels and hinder the effective propagation of features. Therefore, in this paper, we rethink the FAM and BSConv for super-light visual reconstruction framework design. First, we design a novel linking mode, called feature diversity evolution link (FDEL), which aims to alleviate the phenomenon of network inertia by reducing the retention of previous low-level features, thereby promoting the evolution of feature diversity. Second, we propose blueprint controllable convolutions (B2Conv). The B2Conv can adaptively pick accurate intra-kernel correlation in the depth-axis, effectively preventing the introduction of useless or disruptive features. Based on FDEL and B2Conv, we develop a super-light super-resolution (SR) framework SLVR for visual reconstruction. Both FDEL and B2Conv can serve as efficient plugins. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed B2Conv, FDEL, and SLVR. Our code will be available at https://github.com/chongningni/SLVR.