text: We introduce a new system for automatic image content removal and inpainting. Unlike traditional inpainting algorithms, which require advance knowledge of the region to be filled in, our system automatically detects the area to be removed and infilled. Region segmentation and inpainting are performed jointly in a single pass. In this way, potential segmentation errors are more naturally alleviated by the inpainting module. The system is implemented as an encoder-decoder architecture, with two decoder branches, one tasked with segmentation of the foreground region, the other with inpainting. The encoder and the two decoder branches are linked via neglect nodes, which guide the inpainting process in selecting which areas need reconstruction. The whole model is trained using a conditional GAN strategy. Comparative experiments show that our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art inpainting techniques (which, unlike our system, do not segment the input image and thus must be aided by an external segmentation module.)
  @cite_30: 
  @cite_35: Recent deep learning based approaches have shown promising results on image inpainting for the challenging task of filling in large missing regions in an image. These methods can generate visually plausible image structures and textures, but often create distorted structures or blurry textures inconsistent with surrounding areas. This is mainly due to ineffectiveness of convolutional neural networks in explicitly borrowing or copying information from distant spatial locations. On the other hand, traditional texture and patch synthesis approaches are particularly suitable when it needs to borrow textures from the surrounding regions. Motivated by these observations, we propose a new deep generative model-based approach which can not only synthesize novel image structures but also explicitly utilize surrounding image features as references during network training to make better predictions. The model is a feed-forward, fully convolutional neural network which can process images with multiple holes at arbitrary locations and with variable sizes during the test time. Experiments on multiple datasets including faces, textures and natural images demonstrate that the proposed approach generates higher-quality inpainting results than existing ones. Code and trained models will be released.
  @cite_4: 
  @cite_8: Semantic image inpainting is a challenging task where large missing regions have to be filled based on the available visual data. Existing methods which extract information from only a single image generally produce unsatisfactory results due to the lack of high level context. In this paper, we propose a novel method for semantic image inpainting, which generates the missing content by conditioning on the available data. Given a trained generative model, we search for the closest encoding of the corrupted image in the latent image manifold using our context and prior losses. This encoding is then passed through the generative model to infer the missing content. In our method, inference is possible irrespective of how the missing content is structured, while the state-of-the-art learning based method requires specific information about the holes in the training phase. Experiments on three datasets show that our method successfully predicts information in large missing regions and achieves pixel-level photorealism, significantly outperforming the state-of-the-art methods.
  @cite_15: 
  @cite_21: 
  @cite_0: Learning good image priors is of utmost importance for the study of vision, computer vision and image processing applications. Learning priors and optimizing over whole images can lead to tremendous computational challenges. In contrast, when we work with small image patches, it is possible to learn priors and perform patch restoration very efficiently. This raises three questions - do priors that give high likelihood to the data also lead to good performance in restoration? Can we use such patch based priors to restore a full image? Can we learn better patch priors? In this work we answer these questions. We compare the likelihood of several patch models and show that priors that give high likelihood to data perform better in patch restoration. Motivated by this result, we propose a generic framework which allows for whole image restoration using any patch based prior for which a MAP (or approximate MAP) estimate can be calculated. We show how to derive an appropriate cost function, how to optimize it and how to use it to restore whole images. Finally, we present a generic, surprisingly simple Gaussian Mixture prior, learned from a set of natural images. When used with the proposed framework, this Gaussian Mixture Model outperforms all other generic prior methods for image denoising, deblurring and inpainting.
  @cite_23: We develop a framework for learning generic, expressive image priors that capture the statistics of natural scenes and can be used for a variety of machine vision tasks. The approach extends traditional Markov random field (MRF) models by learning potential functions over extended pixel neighborhoods. Field potentials are modeled using a Products-of-Experts framework that exploits nonlinear functions of many linear filter responses. In contrast to previous MRF approaches all parameters, including the linear filters themselves, are learned from training data. We demonstrate the capabilities of this Field of Experts model with two example applications, image denoising and image inpainting, which are implemented using a simple, approximate inference scheme. While the model is trained on a generic image database and is not tuned toward a specific application, we obtain results that compete with and even outperform specialized techniques.
  @cite_2: 
  @cite_31: 
  @cite_17: We present a novel approach to low-level vision problems that combines sparse coding and deep networks pre-trained with denoising auto-encoder (DA). We propose an alternative training scheme that successfully adapts DA, originally designed for unsupervised feature learning, to the tasks of image denoising and blind inpainting. Our method's performance in the image denoising task is comparable to that of KSVD which is a widely used sparse coding technique. More importantly, in blind image inpainting task, the proposed method provides solutions to some complex problems that have not been tackled before. Specifically, we can automatically remove complex patterns like superimposed text from an image, rather than simple patterns like pixels missing at random. Moreover, the proposed method does not need the information regarding the region that requires inpainting to be given a priori. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the tasks of image denoising and blind inpainting. We also show that our new training scheme for DA is more effective and can improve the performance of unsupervised feature learning.
summary: Image inpainting @cite_31 has a long history. The goal of inpainting is to fill in a missing region with realistic image content. A variety of inpainting methods have been proposed, including those based on prior image statistics @cite_23 @cite_0 , and those based on CNNs @cite_21 @cite_4 . More recently, outstanding results have been demonstrated with the use of GANs to inpaint even large missing areas @cite_8 @cite_2 @cite_15 @cite_35 . While appropriate for certain domains ( face inpainting), methods in this category often suffer from serious limitations, including the requirement that the missing region have fixed size and shape. All of the inpainting methods mentioned above assume that the corrupted region mask is known (typically as provided by the user). This limits their scope of application, as in most cases, this mask is unavailable. This shortcoming is addressed by blind inpainting algorithms @cite_17 @cite_30 , which do not need access to the foreground mask. However, prior blind inpainting work has been demonstrated only for very simple cases, with constant-valued foreground occupying a small area of the image.