Google Super Resolution Can Zoom In And Enhance Images
Just Like Shown In Movies
We’ve all seen it weekly in TV Police dramas. The cops are looking for a suspect, and all
they have is a grainy/pixelated image. Well, that is until they’ve passed it through their
advanced image recombinator thingy! And hey presto, the cops work is done, a new clean
image with all the missing pixels appears. If only that were grounded in reality because it’s
impossible to find information that isn’t there to create a picture like this! Well, it was, until
researchers found a way to (almost) turn fantasy into reality, called Google Super
Resolution.
Image Credit Google Brain
Google Super Resolution
Now, you may be wondering how can something be created from nothing? Well, to start
with, that’s not what this new imaging technique is doing. So, to help pass on what we
know, you should look at the image above.
As you can see, the images on the left are blurry and pixelated. They are the source files
Google Super Resolution/Google Brain had to use. Each file contained 64 pixels, so if you
now look at the middle row. You can see that the image has been cleared up. This is what
the Google Brain using Google Super Resolution was able to produce, which you must
agree is remarkable! However, what more astonishing is just how accurate this new
technique is. Look at the right column of the image above, and you will see the source file.
It’s only then that you will be able to tell just how close Google Super Resolution gets it.
Synthesize Details from Low-resolution images
Now the real science behind how Google’s researchers were able to get this technique to
work is heavy reading. So, we’ll give you the short version: Created by Ryan Dahl,
Mohammad Norouzi, and Jonathon Shlens the full name for it is pixel recursive super
resolution. It allowed the researchers to synthesize low-resolution images by combining the
power of two neutral networks.
The above process allows the 8×8 source image to be compared to the high-resolution
image. And then it approximates/guesses what the new picture may look like when
zoomed in. However, to output something like a face, Google Super Resolution has to
realistic details to the face. It does that by comparing what pixels go where on the high-res
image and places them correspondingly.
How Accurate is it?
If you take another look at the image above and make your own comparison, you will see
it’s fairly accurate. However, as researchers do Dahl, Norouzi, and Shlens put it to the test
themselves. The results they discovered pointed towards people being fooled by the
created image 10-percent of the time. However, when a recreation of a non-human face
was used (a bedroom), it fooled those questioned 28-percent of the time.
Now to be considered useful, the researchers are looking for a figure of at least 50percent, so as you can tell it’s some way off. Does this mean, it can’t help law enforcement
agencies to do their job? To be honest were not sure. However, one thing is for certain,
when it comes to convicting people of crimes it has to be more accurate.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2017/02/google-zoom-image-enhance-pixel/
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.00783.pdf