# Diffusion Enhancement for Cloud Removal in Ultra-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.15105 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15105/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Free-Form Image Inpainting with Gated Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03589/) (2018)
- [Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Survey and A New Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00133/) (2019)
- [Scale-recurrent Network for Deep Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01770/) (2018)
- [Rethinking Coarse-to-Fine Approach in Single Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05054/) (2021)
- [Generative Diffusion Prior for Unified Image Restoration and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01247/) (2023)
- [Pyramid Diffusion Models For Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10028/) (2023)
- [SEN12MS-CR-TS: A Remote Sensing Data Set for Multi-modal Multi-temporal Cloud Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09613/) (2022)
- [A Remote Sensing Image Dataset for Cloud Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00600/) (2019)
- [Cloud Removal for Remote Sensing Imagery via Spatial Attention Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13015/) (2020)
- [DiffCR: A Fast Conditional Diffusion Framework for Cloud Removal from Optical Satellite Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04417/) (2023)
- [Cloud-Net: An end-to-end Cloud Detection Algorithm for Landsat 8 Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.10077/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Dual-Output Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04304/) (2022)
- [Cloud Detection Algorithm for Remote Sensing Images Using Fully Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05782/) (2018)
- [Memory augment is All You Need for image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01377/) (2023)
- [Solving Diffusion ODEs with Optimal Boundary Conditions for Better Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15357/) (2023)
- [Removing Clouds and Recovering Ground Observations in Satellite Image Sequences via Temporally Contiguous Robust Matrix Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03915/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Decomposition-based Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04531/) (2024)
- [Effective Cloud Removal for Remote Sensing Images by an Improved Mean-Reverting Denoising Model with Elucidated Design Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23717/) (2025)
- [Learning Domain-Aware Task Prompt Representations for Multi-Domain All-in-One Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01725/) (2026)
- [PPMamba: A Pyramid Pooling Local Auxiliary SSM-Based Model for Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06309/) (2024)
- [DC4CR: When Cloud Removal Meets Diffusion Control in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14785/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Cross-Modal Feature Interaction Network for Hyperspectral and LiDAR Data Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06945/) (2025)
- [A Unified Foundation Model for All-in-One Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Image Restoration and Fusion with Language Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05629/) (2026)
- [Multimodal Diffusion Bridge with Attention-Based SAR Fusion for Satellite Image Cloud Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03607/) (2025)
- [CoRE-UIR: Prior-guided common and residual experts for efficient all-in-one remote sensing image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27898/) (2026)
- [Remote Sensing Image Dehazing: A Systematic Review of Progress, Challenges, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20289/) (2026)
- [Interpretation-Oriented Cloud Removal via Observation-Anchored Residual Flow with Geo-Contextual Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02471/) (2026)
- [Image Restoration via Multi-domain Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05504/) (2025)
- [A Non-Reference Diffusion-Based Restoration Framework for Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off Imagery in Antarctica](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21371/) (2026)
- [ORBITALIF: An Efficient Spiking Federated Learning Framework for Onboard Cloud Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24073/) (2026)
- [GeoCR: Learning a Generalist Cloud Removal Prior from Heterogeneous Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32510/) (2026)
- [EORestore-Agent: Fidelity-Guided Agentic Restoration of Remote Sensing Images with Composite Degradations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06196/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The presence of cloud layers severely compromises the quality and effectiveness of optical remote sensing (RS) images. However, existing deep-learning (DL)-based Cloud Removal (CR) techniques encounter difficulties in accurately reconstructing the original visual authenticity and detailed semantic content of the images. To tackle this challenge, this work proposes to encompass enhancements at the data and methodology fronts. On the data side, an ultra-resolution benchmark named CUHK Cloud Removal (CUHK-CR) of 0.5m spatial resolution is established. This benchmark incorporates rich detailed textures and diverse cloud coverage, serving as a robust foundation for designing and assessing CR models. From the methodology perspective, a novel diffusion-based framework for CR called Diffusion Enhancement (DE) is proposed to perform progressive texture detail recovery, which mitigates the training difficulty with improved inference accuracy. Additionally, a Weight Allocation (WA) network is developed to dynamically adjust the weights for feature fusion, thereby further improving performance, particularly in the context of ultra-resolution image generation. Furthermore, a coarse-to-fine training strategy is applied to effectively expedite training convergence while reducing the computational complexity required to handle ultra-resolution images. Extensive experiments on the newly established CUHK-CR and existing datasets such as RICE confirm that the proposed DE framework outperforms existing DL-based methods in terms of both perceptual quality and signal fidelity.