Curvature preserving image super-resolution with gradient-consistency-anisotropic-regularization prior

• Curvature preserving image super-resolution.
• Gradient-consistency-anisotropic-regularization prior.
• Adaptive de-convolution and curvature refinement.
• Preserving image details and recovering high frequency information.
• Natural-looking and artifact-free reconstruction.

Single image super-resolution (SR) often suffers from annoying interpolation artifacts such as blur, jagged edges, and ringing. In this paper, we aim to achieve artifact-free SR reconstruction from an input low resolution (LR) image using adaptive de-convolution and curvature refinement. To achieve this, we propose a curvature preserving image SR method based on a gradient-consistency-anisotropic-regularization (GCAR) prior. The gradient consistency term effectively suppresses visual artifacts such as ringing and preserves sharp edges in images while the anisotropic regularization term adaptively preserves the high frequency information according to the gradient magnitude. The complementary two terms are elaborately combined into the GCAR prior for the SR reconstruction. The GCAR prior is very effective in preserving image details and recovering high frequency information. Moreover, we use curvature refinement to remove jagged artifacts caused by aliasing due to decimation. The proposed method employs an effective feedback-control loop which contains adaptive de-convolution, re-convolution, pixel substitution, and curvature refinement. The GCAR prior is utilized in the adaptive de-convolution step. Extensive experiments on various test images demonstrate that the proposed method produces natural-looking and artifact-free SR results in terms of both visual quality and quantitative performance.