IVJul 11, 2024Code
Spatially-Variant Degradation Model for Dataset-free Super-resolutionShaojie Guo, Haofei Song, Qingli Li et al.
This paper focuses on the dataset-free Blind Image Super-Resolution (BISR). Unlike existing dataset-free BISR methods that focus on obtaining a degradation kernel for the entire image, we are the first to explicitly design a spatially-variant degradation model for each pixel. Our method also benefits from having a significantly smaller number of learnable parameters compared to data-driven spatially-variant BISR methods. Concretely, each pixel's degradation kernel is expressed as a linear combination of a learnable dictionary composed of a small number of spatially-variant atom kernels. The coefficient matrices of the atom degradation kernels are derived using membership functions of fuzzy set theory. We construct a novel Probabilistic BISR model with tailored likelihood function and prior terms. Subsequently, we employ the Monte Carlo EM algorithm to infer the degradation kernels for each pixel. Our method achieves a significant improvement over other state-of-the-art BISR methods, with an average improvement of 1 dB (2x).Code will be released at https://github.com/shaojieguoECNU/SVDSR.
CVNov 14, 2025
D-GAP: Improving Out-of-Domain Robustness via Dataset-Agnostic and Gradient-Guided Augmentation in Amplitude and Pixel SpacesRuoqi Wang, Haitao Wang, Shaojie Guo et al.
Out-of-domain (OOD) robustness is challenging to achieve in real-world computer vision applications, where shifts in image background, style, and acquisition instruments always degrade model performance. Generic augmentations show inconsistent gains under such shifts, whereas dataset-specific augmentations require expert knowledge and prior analysis. Moreover, prior studies show that neural networks adapt poorly to domain shifts because they exhibit a learning bias to domain-specific frequency components. Perturbing frequency values can mitigate such bias but overlooks pixel-level details, leading to suboptimal performance. To address these problems, we propose D-GAP (Dataset-agnostic and Gradient-guided augmentation in Amplitude and Pixel spaces), improving OOD robustness by introducing targeted augmentation in both the amplitude space (frequency space) and pixel space. Unlike conventional handcrafted augmentations, D-GAP computes sensitivity maps in the frequency space from task gradients, which reflect how strongly the model responds to different frequency components, and uses the maps to adaptively interpolate amplitudes between source and target samples. This way, D-GAP reduces the learning bias in frequency space, while a complementary pixel-space blending procedure restores fine spatial details. Extensive experiments on four real-world datasets and three domain-adaptation benchmarks show that D-GAP consistently outperforms both generic and dataset-specific augmentations, improving average OOD performance by +5.3% on real-world datasets and +1.8% on benchmark datasets.
CVNov 8, 2024
Cyclic Vision-Language Manipulator: Towards Reliable and Fine-Grained Image Interpretation for Automated Report GenerationYingying Fang, Zihao Jin, Shaojie Guo et al.
Despite significant advancements in automated report generation, the opaqueness of text interpretability continues to cast doubt on the reliability of the content produced. This paper introduces a novel approach to identify specific image features in X-ray images that influence the outputs of report generation models. Specifically, we propose Cyclic Vision-Language Manipulator CVLM, a module to generate a manipulated X-ray from an original X-ray and its report from a designated report generator. The essence of CVLM is that cycling manipulated X-rays to the report generator produces altered reports aligned with the alterations pre-injected into the reports for X-ray generation, achieving the term "cyclic manipulation". This process allows direct comparison between original and manipulated X-rays, clarifying the critical image features driving changes in reports and enabling model users to assess the reliability of the generated texts. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that CVLM can identify more precise and reliable features compared to existing explanation methods, significantly enhancing the transparency and applicability of AI-generated reports.
CVOct 23, 2025
Knowledge-Informed Neural Network for Complex-Valued SAR Image RecognitionHaodong Yang, Zhongling Huang, Shaojie Guo et al.
Deep learning models for complex-valued Synthetic Aperture Radar (CV-SAR) image recognition are fundamentally constrained by a representation trilemma under data-limited and domain-shift scenarios: the concurrent, yet conflicting, optimization of generalization, interpretability, and efficiency. Our work is motivated by the premise that the rich electromagnetic scattering features inherent in CV-SAR data hold the key to resolving this trilemma, yet they are insufficiently harnessed by conventional data-driven models. To this end, we introduce the Knowledge-Informed Neural Network (KINN), a lightweight framework built upon a novel "compression-aggregation-compression" architecture. The first stage performs a physics-guided compression, wherein a novel dictionary processor adaptively embeds physical priors, enabling a compact unfolding network to efficiently extract sparse, physically-grounded signatures. A subsequent aggregation module enriches these representations, followed by a final semantic compression stage that utilizes a compact classification head with self-distillation to learn maximally task-relevant and discriminative embeddings. We instantiate KINN in both CNN (0.7M) and Vision Transformer (0.95M) variants. Extensive evaluations on five SAR benchmarks confirm that KINN establishes a state-of-the-art in parameter-efficient recognition, offering exceptional generalization in data-scarce and out-of-distribution scenarios and tangible interpretability, thereby providing an effective solution to the representation trilemma and offering a new path for trustworthy AI in SAR image analysis.
CVMay 18, 2025
Improving Out-of-Domain Robustness with Targeted Augmentation in Frequency and Pixel SpacesRuoqi Wang, Haitao Wang, Shaojie Guo et al.
Out-of-domain (OOD) robustness under domain adaptation settings, where labeled source data and unlabeled target data come from different distributions, is a key challenge in real-world applications. A common approach to improving OOD robustness is through data augmentations. However, in real-world scenarios, models trained with generic augmentations can only improve marginally when generalized under distribution shifts toward unlabeled target domains. While dataset-specific targeted augmentations can address this issue, they typically require expert knowledge and extensive prior data analysis to identify the nature of the datasets and domain shift. To address these challenges, we propose Frequency-Pixel Connect, a domain-adaptation framework that enhances OOD robustness by introducing a targeted augmentation in both the frequency space and pixel space. Specifically, we mix the amplitude spectrum and pixel content of a source image and a target image to generate augmented samples that introduce domain diversity while preserving the semantic structure of the source image. Unlike previous targeted augmentation methods that are both dataset-specific and limited to the pixel space, Frequency-Pixel Connect is dataset-agnostic, enabling broader and more flexible applicability beyond natural image datasets. We further analyze the effectiveness of Frequency-Pixel Connect by evaluating the performance of our method connecting same-class cross-domain samples while separating different-class examples. We demonstrate that Frequency-Pixel Connect significantly improves cross-domain connectivity and outperforms previous generic methods on four diverse real-world benchmarks across vision, medical, audio, and astronomical domains, and it also outperforms other dataset-specific targeted augmentation methods.