mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Simple Baselines for Image Restoration

arXiv 2204.04676 ↗First posted 10 Apr 2022cs.CVcited by 701

Not on the map. Why?

Cited by 81 in Diffusion models, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Although there have been significant advances in the field of image restoration recently, the system complexity of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods is increasing as well, which may hinder the convenient analysis and comparison of methods. In this paper, we propose a simple baseline that exceeds the SOTA methods and is computationally efficient. To further simplify the baseline, we reveal that the nonlinear activation functions, e.g. Sigmoid, ReLU, GELU, Softmax, etc. are not necessary: they could be replaced by multiplication or removed. Thus, we derive a Nonlinear Activation Free Network, namely NAFNet, from the baseline. SOTA results are achieved on various challenging benchmarks, e.g. 33.69 dB PSNR on GoPro (for image deblurring), exceeding the previous SOTA 0.38 dB with only 8.4% of its computational costs; 40.30 dB PSNR on SIDD (for image denoising), exceeding the previous SOTA 0.28 dB with less than half of its computational costs. The code and the pre-trained models are released at https://github.com/megvii-research/NAFNet.

Key facts. Cited by 701 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2022.

Builds on

34 of 41 references.

References · 34

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
  3. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 36,960
  4. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
  5. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
  6. 2021Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windowscited by 12,082
  7. 2015Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shiftcited by 6,979
  8. 2016Layer Normalizationcited by 5,579
  9. 2016SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restartscited by 4,993
  10. 2017Squeeze-and-Excitation Networkscited by 4,763
  11. 2022A ConvNet for the 2020scited by 3,545
  12. 2016Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)cited by 3,431
22 more
  1. 2021SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformercited by 1,869
  2. 2019Transformer-XL: Attentive Language Models Beyond a Fixed-Length Contextcited by 1,830
  3. 2020GLU Variants Improve Transformercited by 1,724
  4. 2021Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restorationcited by 1,618
  5. 2016Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Networkcited by 1,199
  6. 2016Instance Normalization: The Missing Ingredient for Fast Stylizationcited by 1,187
  7. 2020Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformercited by 891
  8. 2021Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restorationcited by 864
  9. 2021Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restorationcited by 813
  10. 2016Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurringcited by 722
  11. 2016Language Modeling with Gated Convolutional Networkscited by 688
  12. 2021Rethinking Coarse-to-Fine Approach in Single Image Deblurringcited by 324
  13. 2022MAXIM: Multi-Axis MLP for Image Processingcited by 301
  14. 2021HINet: Half Instance Normalization Network for Image Restorationcited by 236
  15. 2022VRT: A Video Restoration Transformercited by 219
  16. 2022Transformer Quality in Linear Timecited by 189
  17. 2020NBNet: Noise Basis Learning for Image Denoising with Subspace Projectioncited by 77
  18. 2020Practical Deep Raw Image Denoising on Mobile Devicescited by 76
  19. 2021Improving Image Restoration by Revisiting Global Information Aggregationcited by 60
  20. 2021NTIRE 2021 Challenge on Image Deblurringcited by 49
  21. 2020Mind the Pad -- CNNs can Develop Blind Spotscited by 41
  22. 2020Towards Stabilizing Batch Statistics in Backward Propagation of Batch Normalizationcited by 19

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 39; 2023: 145; 2024: 176; 2025: 194; 2026: 147.

701 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2024MambaIR: A Simple Baseline for Image Restoration with State-Space Modelcited by 349
  2. 2023DiffIR: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Restorationcited by 253
  3. 2023Image Restoration with Mean-Reverting Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 182
  4. 2024A Survey on Diffusion Models for Inverse Problemscited by 173
  5. 2022Efficient Frequency Domain-based Transformers for High-Quality Image Deblurringcited by 164
  6. 2023Inversion by Direct Iteration: An Alternative to Denoising Diffusion for Image Restorationcited by 164
  7. 2023InstructDiffusion: A Generalist Modeling Interface for Vision Taskscited by 162
  8. 2024InstructIR: High-Quality Image Restoration Following Human Instructionscited by 139
  9. 2023Dual Aggregation Transformer for Image Super-Resolutioncited by 124
  10. 2023PromptIR: Prompting for All-in-One Blind Image Restorationcited by 113
  11. 2023EditGuard: Versatile Image Watermarking for Tamper Localization and Copyright Protectioncited by 109
  12. 2023Controlling Vision-Language Models for Multi-Task Image Restorationcited by 108
38 more
  1. 2024AdaIR: Adaptive All-in-One Image Restoration via Frequency Mining and Modulationcited by 108
  2. 2023AutoDIR: Automatic All-in-One Image Restoration with Latent Diffusioncited by 98
  3. 2024OneRestore: A Universal Restoration Framework for Composite Degradationcited by 91
  4. 2024VmambaIR: Visual State Space Model for Image Restorationcited by 90
  5. 2023Refusion: Enabling Large-Size Realistic Image Restoration with Latent-Space Diffusion Modelscited by 86
  6. 2023ProRes: Exploring Degradation-aware Visual Prompt for Universal Image Restorationcited by 77
  7. 2022NAFSSR: Stereo Image Super-Resolution Using NAFNetcited by 75
  8. 2024Selective Hourglass Mapping for Universal Image Restoration Based on Diffusion Modelcited by 73
  9. 2024Restoring Images in Adverse Weather Conditions via Histogram Transformercited by 73
  10. 2024Complexity Experts are Task-Discriminative Learners for Any Image Restorationcited by 72
  11. 2022A Simple Baseline for Video Restoration with Grouped Spatial-temporal Shiftcited by 68
  12. 2023HAT: Hybrid Attention Transformer for Image Restorationcited by 64
  13. 2024Diffusion Models, Image Super-Resolution And Everything: A Surveycited by 63
  14. 2023Omni Aggregation Networks for Lightweight Image Super-Resolutioncited by 62
  15. 2024Perceive-IR: Learning to Perceive Degradation Better for All-in-One Image Restorationcited by 60
  16. 2024A Survey on All-in-One Image Restoration: Taxonomy, Evaluation and Future Trendscited by 58
  17. 2023A Comparative Study of Image Restoration Networks for General Backbone Network Designcited by 56
  18. 2024DarkIR: Robust Low-Light Image Restorationcited by 48
  19. 2022N-Gram in Swin Transformers for Efficient Lightweight Image Super-Resolutioncited by 46
  20. 2023WaveDM: Wavelet-Based Diffusion Models for Image Restorationcited by 46
  21. 2023Neural Degradation Representation Learning for All-In-One Image Restorationcited by 46
  22. 2023Sparse Sampling Transformer with Uncertainty-Driven Ranking for Unified Removal of Raindrops and Rain Streakscited by 45
  23. 2023Prompt-In-Prompt Learning for Universal Image Restorationcited by 43
  24. 2024MaIR: A Locality- and Continuity-Preserving Mamba for Image Restorationcited by 43
  25. 2023Lighting up NeRF via Unsupervised Decomposition and Enhancementcited by 40
  26. 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Image Super-Resolution (x4): Methods and Resultscited by 40
  27. 2025UniRestore: Unified Perceptual and Task-Oriented Image Restoration Model Using Diffusion Priorcited by 39
  28. 2025Degradation-Aware Feature Perturbation for All-in-One Image Restorationcited by 39
  29. 2023Single Image Reflection Separation via Component Synergycited by 38
  30. 2023ExBluRF: Efficient Radiance Fields for Extreme Motion Blurred Imagescited by 38
  31. 2023High-Resolution Document Shadow Removal via A Large-Scale Real-World Dataset and A Frequency-Aware Shadow Erasing Netcited by 36
  32. 2023Language-driven All-in-one Adverse Weather Removalcited by 36
  33. 2023Improving Image Restoration through Removing Degradations in Textual Representationscited by 36
  34. 2025MB-TaylorFormer V2: Improved Multi-branch Linear Transformer Expanded by Taylor Formula for Image Restorationcited by 36
  35. 2023KBNet: Kernel Basis Network for Image Restorationcited by 33
  36. 2023Revisiting Single Image Reflection Removal In the Wildcited by 33
  37. 2023Curriculum Learning for ab initio Deep Learned Refractive Opticscited by 32
  38. 2023Random Sub-Samples Generation for Self-Supervised Real Image Denoisingcited by 31

50 most cited of 701 All 701 (JSON)