# Multi-Expert Adaptive Selection: Task-Balancing for All-in-One Image Restoration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19139 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19139/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 98 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.06538/) (2017)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03981/) (2016)
- [Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00364/) (2020)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02808/) (2021)
- [Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02177/) (2016)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [Simple Baselines for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04676/) (2022)
- [FFDNet: Toward a Fast and Flexible Solution for CNN based Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04026/) (2017)
- [Benchmarking Single Image Dehazing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04143/) (2017)
- [Learning Deep CNN Denoiser Prior for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03264/) (2017)
- [Rethinking Coarse-to-Fine Approach in Single Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05054/) (2021)
- [FFA-Net: Feature Fusion Attention Network for Single Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07559/) (2019)
- [Progressive Image Deraining Networks: A Better and Simpler Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09221/) (2019)
- [Multi-Scale Progressive Fusion Network for Single Image Deraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10985/) (2020)
- [TransWeather: Transformer-based Restoration of Images Degraded by Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14813/) (2021)
- [HINet: Half Instance Normalization Network for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06086/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Mixture of Experts in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06204/) (2024)
- [Attentive Generative Adversarial Network for Raindrop Removal from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10098/) (2017)
- [DesnowNet: Context-Aware Deep Network for Snow Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04512/) (2017)
- [Deblurring by Realistic Blurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01860/) (2020)
- [Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Benchmark and Transformer-Based Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11548/) (2022)
- [Heavy Rain Image Restoration: Integrating Physics Model and Conditional Adversarial Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05050/) (2019)
- [Learning Enriched Features for Fast Image Restoration and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01649/) (2022)
- [InstructIR: High-Quality Image Restoration Following Human Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16468/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Complexity Experts are Task-Discriminative Learners for Any Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18466/) (2024)
- [A Survey on All-in-One Image Restoration: Taxonomy, Evaluation and Future Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15067/) (2024)
- [M2Restore: Mixture-of-Experts-based Mamba-CNN Fusion Framework for All-in-One Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07814/) (2025)
- [Learning Efficient and Effective Trajectories for Differential Equation-based Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04811/) (2024)
- [ClusIR: Towards Cluster-Guided All-in-One Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10948/) (2025)
- [PhyDAE: Physics-Guided Degradation-Adaptive Experts for All-in-One Remote Sensing Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08653/) (2025)
- [Latent Harmony: Synergistic Unified UHD Image Restoration via Latent Space Regularization and Controllable Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07961/) (2025)
- [DFDNet: Dynamic Frequency-Guided De-Flare Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17489/) (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)
- [Wavelet-Enhanced Desnowing: A Novel Single Image Restoration Approach for Traffic Surveillance under Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01339/) (2025)
- [Nighttime Hazy Image Enhancement via Progressively and Mutually Reinforcing Night-Haze Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01998/) (2026)
- [SLER-IR: Spherical Layer-wise Expert Routing for All-in-One Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05940/) (2026)
- [M2IR: Proactive All-in-One Image Restoration via Mamba-style Modulation and Mixture-of-Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14816/) (2026)
- [Unified Restoration-Perception Learning: Maritime Infrared-Visible Image Fusion and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28414/) (2026)
- [Divide and Restore: A Modular Task-Decoupled Framework for Universal Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28658/) (2026)
- [QuReC: All-in-One Image Restoration with Query-Specific Guidance and Local-Global Response Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15097/) (2026)
- [What to Remove, What to Preserve: Dual-Ambiguity Rectification for All-in-One Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28526/) (2026)
- [Beyond Uniform Restoration: Empowering All-in-One Restoration with Pixel-Level Multimodal Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09482/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The use of a single image restoration framework to achieve multi-task image restoration has garnered significant attention from researchers. However, several practical challenges remain, including meeting the specific and simultaneous demands of different tasks, balancing relationships between tasks, and effectively utilizing task correlations in model design. To address these challenges, this paper explores a multi-expert adaptive selection mechanism. We begin by designing a feature representation method that accounts for both the pixel channel level and the global level, encompassing low-frequency and high-frequency components of the image. Based on this method, we construct a multi-expert selection and ensemble scheme. This scheme adaptively selects the most suitable expert from the expert library according to the content of the input image and the prompts of the current task. It not only meets the individualized needs of different tasks but also achieves balance and optimization across tasks. By sharing experts, our design promotes interconnections between different tasks, thereby enhancing overall performance and resource utilization. Additionally, the multi-expert mechanism effectively eliminates irrelevant experts, reducing interference from them and further improving the effectiveness and accuracy of image restoration. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method is both effective and superior to existing approaches, highlighting its potential for practical applications in multi-task image restoration.