Author name cluster

Tian Ye

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

10 papers

1 author row

AAAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

AGLLDiff: Guiding Diffusion Models Towards Unsupervised Training-free Real-world Low-light Image Enhancement

Yunlong Lin
Tian Ye
Sixiang Chen
Zhenqi Fu
Yingying Wang
Wenhao Chai
Zhaohu Xing
Wenxue Li

Existing low-light image enhancement (LIE) methods have achieved noteworthy success in solving synthetic distortions, yet they often fall short in practical applications. The limitations arise from two inherent challenges in real-world LIE: 1) the collection of distorted/clean image pairs is often impractical and sometimes even unavailable, and 2) accurately modeling complex degradations presents a non-trivial problem. To overcome them, we propose the Attribute Guidance Diffusion framework (AGLLDiff), a training-free method for effective real-world LIE. Instead of specifically defining the degradation process, AGLLDiff shifts the paradigm and models the desired attributes, such as image exposure, structure and color of normal-light images. These attributes are readily available and impose no assumptions about the degradation process, which guides the diffusion sampling process to a reliable high-quality solution space. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach outperforms the current leading unsupervised LIE methods across benchmarks in terms of distortion-based and perceptual-based metrics, and it performs well even in sophisticated wild degradation.

PDF Details DOI

AAAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

Dehaze-RetinexGAN: Real-World Image Dehazing via Retinex-based Generative Adversarial Network

Xinran Wang
Guang Yang
Tian Ye
Yun Liu

Deep learning based dehazing networks trained on paired synthetic data have shown impressive performance, but they struggle with significant degradation in generalization ability on real-world hazy scenes. In this paper, we propose Dehaze-RetinexGAN, a lightweight Retinex-based Generative Adversarial Network for real-world image Dehazing using unpaired data. Our Dehaze-RetinexGAN consists of two stages: self-supervised pre-training and weakly-supervised fine-tuning. During the pre-training, we reduce the image dehazing task to an illumination-reflectance decomposition task based on the duality correlation between Retinex and dehazing. Specifically, a decomposition network named DecomNet is constructed to obtain an illumination and a reflectance, simultaneously. Moreover, a self-supervised learning strategy is developed to construct the connection between the preliminary dehazed result and the input hazy image, which constrains the solution space of DecomNet and accelerates training, leading to a more realistic dehazed result. In the fine-tuning stage, we develop a dual DTCWT-based attention module and embed it into the U-Net architecture to further improve the quality of preliminary result in the frequency domain. In addition, the adversarial learning is employed to constrain the relevance between the clean image and the final dehazed result in a weakly supervised manner, which can promote more natural performance. Extensive experiments on several real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed framework performs favorably over state-of-the-art dehazing methods in visual quality and quantitative evaluation.

PDF Details DOI

AAAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

DPLUT: Unsupervised Low-light Image Enhancement with Lookup Tables and Diffusion Priors

Yunlong Lin
Zhenqi Fu
Kairun Wen
Tian Ye
Sixiang Chen
Ge Meng
Yingying Wang
Chui Kong

Low-light image enhancement (LIE) aims at precisely and efficiently recovering an image degraded in poor illumination environments. Recent advanced LIE techniques are using deep neural networks, which require lots of low-normal light image pairs, network parameters, and computational resources. As a result, their practicality is limited. In this work, we devise a novel unsupervised LIE framework based on diffusion priors and lookup tables (DPLUT) to achieve efficient low-light image recovery. The proposed approach comprises two critical components: a light adjustment lookup table (LLUT) and a noise suppression lookup table (NLUT). LLUT is optimized with a set of unsupervised losses. It aims at predicting pixel-wise curve parameters for the dynamic range adjustment of a specific image. NLUT is designed to remove the amplified noise after the light brightens. As diffusion models are sensitive to noise, diffusion priors are introduced to achieve high-performance noise suppression. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of visual quality and efficiency.

PDF Details DOI

AAAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

PromptHaze: Prompting Real-world Dehazing via Depth Anything Model

Tian Ye
Sixiang Chen
Haoyu Chen
Wenhao Chai
Jingjing Ren
Zhaohu Xing
Wenxue Li
Lei Zhu

Real-world image dehazing remains a challenging task due to the diverse nature of haze degradation and the lack of large-scale paired datasets. Existing methods based on hand-crafted priors or generative priors struggle to recover accurate backgrounds and fine details from dense haze regions. In this work, we propose a novel paradigm, PromptHaze, for real-world image dehazing via the depth prompt from the Depth Anything model. By employing a prompt-by-prompt strategy, our method iteratively updates the depth prompt and progressively restores the background through a dehazing network with controllable dehazing strength. Extensive experiments on widely-used real-world dehazing benchmarks demonstrate the superiority of PromptHaze in recovering authentic backgrounds and fine details from various haze scenes, outperforming state-of-the-art methods across multiple quality metrics.

PDF Details DOI

AAAI Conference 2025 Conference Paper

Residual Diffusion Deblurring Model for Single Image Defocus Deblurring

Haoxuan Feng
Haohui Zhou
Tian Ye
Sixiang Chen
Lei Zhu

Defocus deblurring is a challenging task due to the spatially varying nature of defocus blur with multiple plausible solutions of a single given image. However, most existing methods falter when faced with extensive and variable defocus blur, either ignoring it or relying on additional loss functions to enhance perceptual quality. This often results in unrealistic reconstructions and compromised generalizability. In this paper, we propose a novel Residual Diffusion Deblurring Model framework for single image defocus deblurring. Our approach integrates a pre-trained defocus map estimator and a lightweight pre-deblur module with a learnable receptive field, providing crucial posterior information to effectively address large-scale and varying shaped defocus blur. In addition, a carefully-design denoising network enables the generation of diverse reconstructions from a single input. This approach not only significantly improves the perceptual quality of defocus deblurring outputs through multi-step residual learning, but also offers a more efficient inference strategy. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves competitive performance on real-world defocus deblurring image datasets across both perceptual and distortion evaluation metrics.

PDF Details DOI

IJCAI Conference 2024 Conference Paper

Integrating View Conditions for Image Synthesis

Jinbin Bai
Zhen Dong
Aosong Feng
Xiao Zhang
Tian Ye
Kaicheng Zhou

In the field of image processing, applying intricate semantic modifications within existing images remains an enduring challenge. This paper introduces a pioneering framework that integrates viewpoint information to enhance the control of image editing tasks, especially for interior design scenes. By surveying existing object editing methodologies, we distill three essential criteria --- consistency, controllability, and harmony --- that should be met for an image editing method. In contrast to previous approaches, our framework takes the lead in satisfying all three requirements for addressing the challenge of image synthesis. Through comprehensive experiments, encompassing both quantitative assessments and qualitative comparisons with contemporary state-of-the-art methods, we present compelling evidence of our framework's superior performance across multiple dimensions. This work establishes a promising avenue for advancing image synthesis techniques and empowering precise object modifications while preserving the visual coherence of the entire composition.

PDF Details DOI

NeurIPS Conference 2024 Conference Paper

RestoreAgent: Autonomous Image Restoration Agent via Multimodal Large Language Models

Haoyu Chen
Wenbo Li
Jinjin Gu
Jingjing Ren
Sixiang Chen
Tian Ye
Renjing Pei
Kaiwen Zhou

Natural images captured by mobile devices often suffer from multiple types of degradation, such as noise, blur, and low light. Traditional image restoration methods require manual selection of specific tasks, algorithms, and execution sequences, which is time-consuming and may yield suboptimal results. All-in-one models, though capable of handling multiple tasks, typically support only a limited range and often produce overly smooth, low-fidelity outcomes due to their broad data distribution fitting. To address these challenges, we first define a new pipeline for restoring images with multiple degradations, and then introduce RestoreAgent, an intelligent image restoration system leveraging multimodal large language models. RestoreAgent autonomously assesses the type and extent of degradation in input images and performs restoration through (1) determining the appropriate restoration tasks, (2) optimizing the task sequence, (3) selecting the most suitable models, and (4) executing the restoration. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of RestoreAgent in handling complex degradation, surpassing human experts. Furthermore, the system’s modular design facilitates the fast integration of new tasks and models.

PDF Details DOI

AAAI Conference 2024 Conference Paper

VQCNIR: Clearer Night Image Restoration with Vector-Quantized Codebook

Wenbin Zou
Hongxia Gao
Tian Ye
Liang Chen
Weipeng Yang
Shasha Huang
Hongsheng Chen
Sixiang Chen

Night photography often struggles with challenges like low light and blurring, stemming from dark environments and prolonged exposures. Current methods either disregard priors and directly fitting end-to-end networks, leading to inconsistent illumination, or rely on unreliable handcrafted priors to constrain the network, thereby bringing the greater error to the final result. We believe in the strength of data-driven high-quality priors and strive to offer a reliable and consistent prior, circumventing the restrictions of manual priors. In this paper, we propose Clearer Night Image Restoration with Vector-Quantized Codebook (VQCNIR) to achieve remarkable and consistent restoration outcomes on real-world and synthetic benchmarks. To ensure the faithful restoration of details and illumination, we propose the incorporation of two essential modules: the Adaptive Illumination Enhancement Module (AIEM) and the Deformable Bi-directional Cross-Attention (DBCA) module. The AIEM leverages the inter-channel correlation of features to dynamically maintain illumination consistency between degraded features and high-quality codebook features. Meanwhile, the DBCA module effectively integrates texture and structural information through bi-directional cross-attention and deformable convolution, resulting in enhanced fine-grained detail and structural fidelity across parallel decoders. Extensive experiments validate the remarkable benefits of VQCNIR in enhancing image quality under low-light conditions, showcasing its state-of-the-art performance on both synthetic and real-world datasets. The code is available at https://github.com/AlexZou14/VQCNIR.

PDF Details DOI

EAAI Journal 2022 Journal Article

Single nighttime image dehazing based on unified variational decomposition model and multi-scale contrast enhancement

Yun Liu
Zhongsheng Yan
Tian Ye
Aimin Wu
Yuche Li

Most of existing dehazing methods are unable to deal with nighttime hazy scenarios well due to complex degraded factors such as non-uniform illumination, low light, glows and hazes. To obtain high-quality image under nighttime haze imaging conditions, we propose a single nighttime image dehazing framework based on a unified variational decomposition model and multi-scale contrast enhancement to simultaneously address these undesirable issues. First, a unified variational decomposition model consisting of three regularization terms is proposed to simultaneously decompose a nighttime hazy image into a structure layer, a detail layer and a noise layer. Concretely, we employ ℓ 1 norm to constrain the structure component, adopt ℓ 0 sparsity term to enforce the piece-wise continuous of the residual of the gradients between the detail layer and the modified glow-free image, and use the Frobenius norm to estimate the noise layer. Next, the hazes in the structure layer are removed by inversing the physical model and the effective details in the texture layers are enhanced while the amplified noises are suppressed in a multi-scale fashion. Finally, the dehazed structure layer and the enhanced detail layers are integrated into a haze-free image. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves superior performance on nighttime haze removal and noise suppression compared with state-of-the-art dehazing techniques.

Details DOI

NeurIPS Conference 2021 Conference Paper

Global Convergence of Gradient Descent for Asymmetric Low-Rank Matrix Factorization

Tian Ye
Simon S. Du

We study the asymmetric low-rank factorization problem: \[\min_{\mathbf{U} \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times d}, \mathbf{V} \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times d}} \frac{1}{2}\|\mathbf{U}\mathbf{V}^\top -\mathbf{\Sigma}\|_F^2\]where $\mathbf{\Sigma}$ is a given matrix of size $m \times n$ and rank $d$. This is a canonical problem that admits two difficulties in optimization: 1) non-convexity and 2) non-smoothness (due to unbalancedness of $\mathbf{U}$ and $\mathbf{V}$). This is also a prototype for more complex problems such as asymmetric matrix sensing and matrix completion. Despite being non-convex and non-smooth, it has been observed empirically that the randomly initialized gradient descent algorithm can solve this problem in polynomial time. Existing theories to explain this phenomenon all require artificial modifications of the algorithm, such as adding noise in each iteration and adding a balancing regularizer to balance the $\mathbf{U}$ and $\mathbf{V}$. This paper presents the first proof that shows randomly initialized gradient descent converges to a global minimum of the asymmetric low-rank factorization problem with a polynomial rate. For the proof, we develop 1) a new symmetrization technique to capture the magnitudes of the symmetry and asymmetry, and 2) a quantitative perturbation analysis to approximate matrix derivatives. We believe both are useful for other related non-convex problems.

PDF Details