Initial Image Selection and its Influence on Super-Resolution Reconstruction

Super-resolution (SR) reconstruction is a technique to yield a higher resolution (HR) image from aliasing low resolution (LR) ones. An LR image is upsampled as the initialization, and then iteratively corrected in comparison with the other LR images. As the solution satisfying the SR constraints is non-unique, it is impossible to recover the original HR details completely by SR techniques. The solution reconstructed is sensitive to the starting point, especially when LR observations are insufficient, and may converge to a local optimum point. SR images reconstructed with different initializations may diverge in different ways from the true HR image. The influence of the initial HR estimate has not been sufficiently addressed so far by existing SR methods. We will explore this initial image selection issue to improve the performance of SR reconstruction.