Divyavardhan Singh

Tim Seizinger, Florin-Alexandru Vasluianu, Jeffrey Chen et al.

This study presents the outcomes of the first Controllable Bokeh Rendering Challenge at NTIRE and highlights the most effective submitted methodologies. In total, 44 participants registered for the competition, of which 8 teams submitted valid solutions after the conclusion of the final test phase. All submissions were evaluated on unseen images, focusing on portraits and intricate subjects with complex and visually appealing bokeh phenomena. In addition to the first track focusing on established quantitative fidelity metrics, we conducted a qualitative user study with a panel of experts for a second track focusing on perceptual assessment. As this was the inaugural challenge on this topic, most of the participants focused on refining and extending the Bokehlicious baseline method.

Divyavardhan Singh, Shubham Kamble, Dimple Sonone et al.

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have been recognized as a mesh-free alternative to solve partial differential equations where physics information is incorporated. However, in dealing with problems characterized by high stiffness or shock-dominated dynamics, traditional PINNs have been found to have limitations, including unbalanced training and inaccuracy in solution, even with small physics residuals. In this research, we seek to address these limitations using the viscous Burgers' equation with low viscosity and the Allen-Cahn equation as test problems. In addressing unbalanced training, we have developed a new adaptive loss balancing scheme using smoothed gradient norms to ensure satisfaction of initial and boundary conditions. Further, to address inaccuracy in the solution, we have developed an adaptive residual-based collocation scheme to improve the accuracy of solutions in the regions with high physics residuals. The proposed new approach significantly improves solution accuracy with consistent satisfaction of physics residuals. For instance, in the case of Burgers' equation, the relative L2 error is reduced by about 44 percent compared to traditional PINNs, while for the Allen-Cahn equation, the relative L2 error is reduced by approximately 70 percent. Additionally, we show the trustworthy solution comparison of the proposed method using a robust finite difference solver.

Zheng Chen, Kai Liu, Jue Gong et al.

This paper presents the NTIRE 2025 image super-resolution ($\times$4) challenge, one of the associated competitions of the 10th NTIRE Workshop at CVPR 2025. The challenge aims to recover high-resolution (HR) images from low-resolution (LR) counterparts generated through bicubic downsampling with a $\times$4 scaling factor. The objective is to develop effective network designs or solutions that achieve state-of-the-art SR performance. To reflect the dual objectives of image SR research, the challenge includes two sub-tracks: (1) a restoration track, emphasizes pixel-wise accuracy and ranks submissions based on PSNR; (2) a perceptual track, focuses on visual realism and ranks results by a perceptual score. A total of 286 participants registered for the competition, with 25 teams submitting valid entries. This report summarizes the challenge design, datasets, evaluation protocol, the main results, and methods of each team. The challenge serves as a benchmark to advance the state of the art and foster progress in image SR.