mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Crafting a Toolchain for Image Restoration by Deep Reinforcement Learning

arXiv 1804.03312 ↗First posted 10 Apr 2018cs.CVcited by 45

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Abstract (arXiv)

We investigate a novel approach for image restoration by reinforcement learning. Unlike existing studies that mostly train a single large network for a specialized task, we prepare a toolbox consisting of small-scale convolutional networks of different complexities and specialized in different tasks. Our method, RL-Restore, then learns a policy to select appropriate tools from the toolbox to progressively restore the quality of a corrupted image. We formulate a step-wise reward function proportional to how well the image is restored at each step to learn the action policy. We also devise a joint learning scheme to train the agent and tools for better performance in handling uncertainty. In comparison to conventional human-designed networks, RL-Restore is capable of restoring images corrupted with complex and unknown distortions in a more parameter-efficient manner using the dynamically formed toolchain.

Key facts. Cited by 45 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2018.

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Citing papers per year: 2020: 1; 2021: 14; 2022: 8; 2023: 7; 2024: 5; 2025: 4; 2026: 6.

45 papers.

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  1. 2021Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1,296
  2. 2023Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 486
  3. 2023Generative Diffusion Prior for Unified Image Restoration and Enhancementcited by 198
  4. 2023A Complete Survey on Generative AI (AIGC): Is ChatGPT from GPT-4 to GPT-5 All You Need?cited by 84
  5. 2021ClassSR: A General Framework to Accelerate Super-Resolution Networks by Data Characteristiccited by 81
  6. 2022TAPE: Task-Agnostic Prior Embedding for Image Restorationcited by 54
  7. 2021NTIRE 2021 Challenge on Image Deblurringcited by 49
  8. 2024RestoreAgent: Autonomous Image Restoration Agent via Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 41
  9. 2024An Intelligent Agentic System for Complex Image Restoration Problemscited by 41
  10. 2022Bringing Old Films Back to Lifecited by 31
  11. 2021ReLLIE: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Customized Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 26
  12. 2023Learning Distortion Invariant Representation for Image Restoration from A Causality Perspectivecited by 17
33 more
  1. 2021Toward Real-World Super-Resolution via Adaptive Downsampling Modelscited by 14
  2. 2022Pik-Fix: Restoring and Colorizing Old Photoscited by 8
  3. 2022Lightweight Stepless Super-Resolution of Remote Sensing Images via Saliency-Aware Dynamic Routing Strategycited by 6
  4. 2020Restoring Spatially-Heterogeneous Distortions using Mixture of Experts Networkcited by 5
  5. 2021R3L: Connecting Deep Reinforcement Learning to Recurrent Neural Networks for Image Denoising via Residual Recoverycited by 4
  6. 2022DRL-ISP: Multi-Objective Camera ISP with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 4
  7. 2024Spatial-temporal Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Interpretable Pathology Image Super-Resolutioncited by 4
  8. 2023Simulating analogue film damage to analyse and improve artefact restoration on high-resolution scanscited by 3
  9. 2023ALL-E: Aesthetics-guided Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 3
  10. 2025Position: Agentic Systems Constitute a Key Component of Next-Generation Intelligent Image Processingcited by 3
  11. 2026Bridging Information Asymmetry: A Hierarchical Framework for Deterministic Blind Face Restorationcited by 3
  12. 2021Sparsely ensembled convolutional neural network classifiers via reinforcement learningcited by 2
  13. 2022REPNP: Plug-and-Play with Deep Reinforcement Learning Prior for Robust Image Restorationcited by 2
  14. 2025TooBadRL: Trigger Optimization to Boost Effectiveness of Backdoor Attacks on Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  15. 2026RL-AWB: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Auto White Balance Correction in Low-Light Night-time Scenescited by 2
  16. 2026OPERA: An Agent for Image Restoration with End-to-End Joint Planning-Execution Optimizationcited by 2
  17. 2021Adaptive Remote Sensing Image Attribute Learning for Active Object Detectioncited by 1
  18. 2021A Reinforcement Learning Approach for Sequential Spatial Transformer Networkscited by 1
  19. 2021Multi-frame Joint Enhancement for Early Interlaced Videoscited by 1
  20. 2021Aesthetic Photo Collage with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  21. 2021Reinforcement Learning of Self Enhancing Camera Image and Signal Processingcited by 1
  22. 2021A Close Look at Few-shot Real Image Super-resolution from the Distortion Relation Perspectivecited by 1
  23. 2022TreEnhance: A Tree Search Method For Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 1
  24. 2024Image Deraining via Self-supervised Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  25. 2024Rethinking Generalizability and Discriminability of Self-Supervised Learning from Evolutionary Game Theory Perspectivecited by 1
  26. 2026AbsoluteDegradation: A Physics-Inspired Synthetic Film-Degradation Pipeline and Archival Film Restoration Benchmarkcited by 1
  27. 2021Super-Resolving Compressed Video in Coding Chaincited by 0
  28. 2022ROMNet: Renovate the Old Memoriescited by 0
  29. 2023Balancing Efficiency and Quality: MoEISR for Arbitrary-Scale Image Super-Resolutioncited by 0
  30. 2025Metadata, Wavelet, and Time Aware Diffusion Models for Satellite Image Super Resolutioncited by 0
  31. 2025Reinforced Diffusion: Learning to Push the Limits of Anisotropic Diffusion for Image Denoisingcited by 0
  32. 2026SPARK: Spatial Policy-driven Adaptive Reinforcement learning for Knowledge distillationcited by 0
  33. 2026SafeRestore: Detector-Relative Risk Certificates for Selective Industrial Image Restorationcited by 0