# NTIRE 2020 Challenge on Real-World Image Super-Resolution: Methods and Results

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01996 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01996/

## Key facts

- Cited by 83 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 May 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 83)

- [Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14006/) (2021)
- [DiffIR: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09472/) (2023)
- [Efficient and Degradation-Adaptive Network for Real-World Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14216/) (2022)
- [Blind Image Super-Resolution: A Survey and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03055/) (2021)
- [VmambaIR: Visual State Space Model for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11423/) (2024)
- [Deep Burst Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10997/) (2021)
- [Fourier Space Losses for Efficient Perceptual Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00783/) (2021)
- [Swin2SR: SwinV2 Transformer for Compressed Image Super-Resolution and Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11345/) (2022)
- [Real-World Single Image Super-Resolution: A Brief Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02368/) (2021)
- [Towards Realistic Data Generation for Real-World Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07255/) (2024)
- [Reference-based Image Super-Resolution with Deformable Attention Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11938/) (2022)
- [DeSRA: Detect and Delete the Artifacts of GAN-based Real-World Super-Resolution Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02457/) (2023)
- [Neural Optimal Transport with General Cost Functionals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15403/) (2022)
- [Learned Smartphone ISP on Mobile NPUs with Deep Learning, Mobile AI 2021 Challenge: Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07809/) (2021)
- [Real-Time Quantized Image Super-Resolution on Mobile NPUs, Mobile AI 2021 Challenge: Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07825/) (2021)
- [DeFlow: Learning Complex Image Degradations from Unpaired Data with Conditional Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05796/) (2021)
- [Knowledge Distillation based Degradation Estimation for Blind Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16928/) (2022)
- [Learning the Degradation Distribution for Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04962/) (2022)
- [Unveiling Hidden Details: A RAW Data-Enhanced Paradigm for Real-World Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10798/) (2024)
- [Optimal Transport for Unsupervised Denoising Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02574/) (2021)
- [DiffI2I: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13767/) (2023)
- [AnimeSR: Learning Real-World Super-Resolution Models for Animation Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07038/) (2022)
- [Hitchhiker's Guide to Super-Resolution: Introduction and Recent Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13131/) (2022)
- [Lucas-Kanade Reloaded: End-to-End Super-Resolution from Raw Image Bursts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06191/) (2021)
- [Self-Supervised Learning for Real-World Super-Resolution from Dual Zoomed Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01325/) (2022)
- [Fast and Accurate Single-Image Depth Estimation on Mobile Devices, Mobile AI 2021 Challenge: Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.08630/) (2021)
- [Real-Time Video Super-Resolution on Smartphones with Deep Learning, Mobile AI 2021 Challenge: Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.08826/) (2021)
- [Real-RawVSR: Real-World Raw Video Super-Resolution with a Benchmark Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12475/) (2022)
- [Learn from Unpaired Data for Image Restoration: A Variational Bayes Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10090/) (2022)
- [Efficient and Accurate Quantized Image Super-Resolution on Mobile NPUs, Mobile AI & AIM 2022 challenge: Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05910/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper reviews the NTIRE 2020 challenge on real world super-resolution. It focuses on the participating methods and final results. The challenge addresses the real world setting, where paired true high and low-resolution images are unavailable. For training, only one set of source input images is therefore provided along with a set of unpaired high-quality target images. In Track 1: Image Processing artifacts, the aim is to super-resolve images with synthetically generated image processing artifacts. This allows for quantitative benchmarking of the approaches wrt a ground-truth image. In Track 2: Smartphone Images, real low-quality smart phone images have to be super-resolved. In both tracks, the ultimate goal is to achieve the best perceptual quality, evaluated using a human study. This is the second challenge on the subject, following AIM 2019, targeting to advance the state-of-the-art in super-resolution. To measure the performance we use the benchmark protocol from AIM 2019. In total 22 teams competed in the final testing phase, demonstrating new and innovative solutions to the problem.