# REPNP: Plug-and-Play with Deep Reinforcement Learning Prior for Robust Image Restoration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.12056 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12056/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03981/) (2016)
- [Residual Dense Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08797/) (2018)
- [FFDNet: Toward a Fast and Flexible Solution for CNN based Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04026/) (2017)
- [Plug-and-Play Image Restoration with Deep Denoiser Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13751/) (2020)
- [Learning Deep CNN Denoiser Prior for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03264/) (2017)
- [Plug-and-Play ADMM for Image Restoration: Fixed Point Convergence and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.01710/) (2016)
- [Non-Local Recurrent Network for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02919/) (2018)
- [Plug-and-Play Algorithms for Large-scale Snapshot Compressive Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13654/) (2020)
- [An Online Plug-and-Play Algorithm for Regularized Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04693/) (2018)
- [Crafting a Toolchain for Image Restoration by Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03312/) (2018)
- [ReLLIE: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Customized Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05830/) (2021)
- [Fully Convolutional Network with Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning for Image Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.04323/) (2018)
- [R3L: Connecting Deep Reinforcement Learning to Recurrent Neural Networks for Image Denoising via Residual Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05318/) (2021)

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

- [Reconciling Stochastic and Deterministic Strategies for Zero-shot Image Restoration using Diffusion Model in Dual](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01288/) (2025)
- [Efficient Halftoning via Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12152/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image restoration schemes based on the pre-trained deep models have received great attention due to their unique flexibility for solving various inverse problems. In particular, the Plug-and-Play (PnP) framework is a popular and powerful tool that can integrate an off-the-shelf deep denoiser for different image restoration tasks with known observation models. However, obtaining the observation model that exactly matches the actual one can be challenging in practice. Thus, the PnP schemes with conventional deep denoisers may fail to generate satisfying results in some real-world image restoration tasks. We argue that the robustness of the PnP framework is largely limited by using the off-the-shelf deep denoisers that are trained by deterministic optimization. To this end, we propose a novel deep reinforcement learning (DRL) based PnP framework, dubbed RePNP, by leveraging a light-weight DRL-based denoiser for robust image restoration tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed RePNP is robust to the observation model used in the PnP scheme deviating from the actual one. Thus, RePNP can generate more reliable restoration results for image deblurring and super resolution tasks. Compared with several state-of-the-art deep image restoration baselines, RePNP achieves better results subjective to model deviation with fewer model parameters.