# Network Architecture Search for Face Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.06528 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06528/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 90 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7766/) (2014)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [Neural Architecture Search with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01578/) (2016)
- [Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03981/) (2016)
- [Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.07012/) (2017)
- [VGGFace2: A dataset for recognising faces across pose and age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.08092/) (2017)
- [Regularized Evolution for Image Classifier Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01548/) (2018)
- [Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03268/) (2018)
- [Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08318/) (2018)
- [Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02177/) (2016)
- [Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06826/) (2020)
- [Noise2Noise: Learning Image Restoration without Clean Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04189/) (2018)
- [Progressive Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00559/) (2017)
- [Res2Net: A New Multi-scale Backbone Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01169/) (2019)
- [DeblurGAN: Blind Motion Deblurring Using Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07064/) (2017)
- [DeblurGAN-v2: Deblurring (Orders-of-Magnitude) Faster and Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03826/) (2019)
- [Large-Scale Evolution of Image Classifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01041/) (2017)
- [Toward Convolutional Blind Denoising of Real Photographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04686/) (2018)
- [Auto-DeepLab: Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02985/) (2019)
- [Learning a Single Convolutional Super-Resolution Network for Multiple Degradations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06116/) (2017)
- [Deep Bilateral Learning for Real-Time Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02880/) (2017)
- [Trainable Nonlinear Reaction Diffusion: A Flexible Framework for Fast and Effective Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.02848/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Representations for Efficient Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00436/) (2017)
- [DSLR-Quality Photos on Mobile Devices with Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02470/) (2017)
- [A Physics-based Noise Formation Model for Extreme Low-light Raw Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12751/) (2020)
- [Genetic CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01513/) (2017)
- [Blind Face Restoration via Deep Multi-scale Component Dictionaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00418/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Survey on Deep Face Restoration: From Non-blind to Blind and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15490/) (2023)
- [Perceptual Quality Improvement in Videoconferencing using Keyframes-based GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04263/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Various factors such as ambient lighting conditions, noise, motion blur, etc. affect the quality of captured face images. Poor quality face images often reduce the performance of face analysis and recognition systems. Hence, it is important to enhance the quality of face images collected in such conditions. We present a multi-task face restoration network, called Network Architecture Search for Face Enhancement (NASFE), which can enhance poor quality face images containing a single degradation (i.e. noise or blur) or multiple degradations (noise+blur+low-light). During training, NASFE uses clean face images of a person present in the degraded image to extract the identity information in terms of features for restoring the image. Furthermore, the network is guided by an identity-loss so that the identity in-formation is maintained in the restored image. Additionally, we propose a network architecture search-based fusion network in NASFE which fuses the task-specific features that are extracted using the task-specific encoders. We introduce FFT-op and deveiling operators in the fusion network to efficiently fuse the task-specific features. Comprehensive experiments on synthetic and real images demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms many recent state-of-the-art face restoration and enhancement methods in terms of quantitative and visual performance.