# Degradation-Aware Self-Attention Based Transformer for Blind Image Super-Resolution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04180 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04180/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02921/) (2017)
- [Rethinking Semantic Segmentation from a Sequence-to-Sequence Perspective with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15840/) (2020)
- [Contrastive Multiview Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05849/) (2019)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Residual Channel Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02758/) (2018)
- [ESRGAN: Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00219/) (2018)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05158/) (2016)
- [Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10833/) (2021)
- [Accurate Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04587/) (2015)
- [Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00364/) (2020)
- [Designing a Practical Degradation Model for Deep Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14006/) (2021)
- [Plug-and-Play Image Restoration with Deep Denoiser Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13751/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning for Generic Object Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02165/) (2018)
- [Visual Transformers: Token-based Image Representation and Processing for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03677/) (2020)
- [Deeply-Recursive Convolutional Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04491/) (2015)
- [Deep Unfolding Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10428/) (2020)
- [Learning a Single Convolutional Super-Resolution Network for Multiple Degradations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06116/) (2017)
- [Blind Super-Resolution With Iterative Kernel Correction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03377/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Degradation Representation Learning for Blind Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00416/) (2021)
- [Blind Super-Resolution Kernel Estimation using an Internal-GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06581/) (2019)
- [Deep Learning for Single Image Super-Resolution: A Brief Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.03344/) (2018)
- [Feedback Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.09814/) (2019)
- [Interpreting Super-Resolution Networks with Local Attribution Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11036/) (2020)
- [Video Super-Resolution Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06847/) (2021)
- [Meta-Transfer Learning for Zero-Shot Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12213/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Frequency-Assisted Mamba for Remote Sensing Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04964/) (2024)
- [CDFormer:When Degradation Prediction Embraces Diffusion Model for Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07648/) (2024)
- [Training-Free Model Ensemble for Single-Image Super-Resolution via Strong-Branch Compensation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11564/) (2026)
- [Blind Video Super-Resolution based on Implicit Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07856/) (2025)
- [FViT: A Focal Vision Transformer with Gabor Filter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11303/) (2024)
- [Wavelet-Assisted Mamba for Satellite-Derived Sea Surface Temperature Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24334/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Blind Super-Resolution Network for Spatial-Specific and Spatial-Agnostic Degradations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07705/) (2025)
- [Dual-domain Adaptation Networks for Realistic Image Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17217/) (2025)
- [Image Super-Resolution with Taylor Expansion Approximation and Large Field Reception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00470/) (2024)
- [Content-decoupled Contrastive Learning-based Implicit Degradation Modeling for Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05440/) (2024)
- [LightBSR: Towards Lightweight Blind Super-Resolution via Discriminative Implicit Degradation Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22710/) (2025)
- [PixelBoost: Leveraging Brownian Motion for Realistic-Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23254/) (2025)
- [Enhanced Self-Supervised Multi-Image Super-Resolution for Camera Array Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06816/) (2026)
- [Dual-Branch State-Displacement Network for Sea Surface Temperature Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15423/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Compared to CNN-based methods, Transformer-based methods achieve impressive image restoration outcomes due to their abilities to model remote dependencies. However, how to apply Transformer-based methods to the field of blind super-resolution (SR) and further make an SR network adaptive to degradation information is still an open problem. In this paper, we propose a new degradation-aware self-attention-based Transformer model, where we incorporate contrastive learning into the Transformer network for learning the degradation representations of input images with unknown noise. In particular, we integrate both CNN and Transformer components into the SR network, where we first use the CNN modulated by the degradation information to extract local features, and then employ the degradation-aware Transformer to extract global semantic features. We apply our proposed model to several popular large-scale benchmark datasets for testing, and achieve the state-of-the-art performance compared to existing methods. In particular, our method yields a PSNR of 32.43 dB on the Urban100 dataset at ×2 scale, 0.94 dB higher than DASR, and 26.62 dB on the Urban100 dataset at ×4 scale, 0.26 dB improvement over KDSR, setting a new benchmark in this area. Source code is available at: https://github.com/I2-Multimedia-Lab/DSAT/tree/main.