A Lightweight Deep Exclusion Unfolding Network for Single Image Reflection Removal
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Mar 3, 2025
Abstract
Single Image Reflection Removal (SIRR) is a canonical blind source separation
problem and refers to the issue of separating a reflection-contaminated image
into a transmission and a reflection image. The core challenge lies in
minimizing the commonalities among different sources. Existing deep learning
approaches either neglect the significance of feature interactions or rely on
heuristically designed architectures. In this paper, we propose a novel Deep
Exclusion unfolding Network (DExNet), a lightweight, interpretable, and
effective network architecture for SIRR. DExNet is principally constructed by
unfolding and parameterizing a simple iterative Sparse and Auxiliary Feature
Update (i-SAFU) algorithm, which is specifically designed to solve a new
model-based SIRR optimization formulation incorporating a general exclusion
prior. This general exclusion prior enables the unfolded SAFU module to
inherently identify and penalize commonalities between the transmission and
reflection features, ensuring more accurate separation. The principled design
of DExNet not only enhances its interpretability but also significantly
improves its performance. Comprehensive experiments on four benchmark datasets
demonstrate that DExNet achieves state-of-the-art visual and quantitative
results while utilizing only approximately 8\% of the parameters required by
leading methods.
