# DiMoSR: Feature Modulation via Multi-Branch Dilated Convolutions for Efficient Image Super-Resolution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21262 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21262/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Residual Channel Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02758/) (2018)
- [Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.00092/) (2014)
- [Real-Time Single Image and Video Super-Resolution Using an Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05158/) (2016)
- [Sigmoid-Weighted Linear Units for Neural Network Function Approximation in Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03118/) (2017)
- [Accurate Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04587/) (2015)
- [Residual Dense Network for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08797/) (2018)
- [Deep Laplacian Pyramid Networks for Fast and Accurate Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03915/) (2017)
- [Activating More Pixels in Image Super-Resolution Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04437/) (2022)
- [Accelerating the Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00367/) (2016)
- [Single Image Super-Resolution via a Holistic Attention Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08767/) (2020)
- [Fast, Accurate, and Lightweight Super-Resolution with Cascading Residual Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08664/) (2018)
- [Lightweight Image Super-Resolution with Information Multi-distillation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.11856/) (2019)
- [Efficient Long-Range Attention Network for Image Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06697/) (2022)
- [Dual Aggregation Transformer for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03364/) (2023)
- [LAPAR: Linearly-Assembled Pixel-Adaptive Regression Network for Single Image Super-Resolution and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10422/) (2021)
- [Efficient Image Super-Resolution Using Pixel Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01073/) (2020)
- [Fourier Space Losses for Efficient Perceptual Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00783/) (2021)
- [SwinFIR: Revisiting the SwinIR with Fast Fourier Convolution and Improved Training for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.11247/) (2022)
- [Spatially-Adaptive Feature Modulation for Efficient Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13800/) (2023)
- [Residual Local Feature Network for Efficient Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07514/) (2022)
- [ShuffleMixer: An Efficient ConvNet for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15175/) (2022)
- [Blueprint Separable Residual Network for Efficient Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05996/) (2022)
- [DRCT: Saving Image Super-resolution away from Information Bottleneck](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00722/) (2024)
- [Feature Distillation Interaction Weighting Network for Lightweight Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08655/) (2021)
- [Recursive Generalization Transformer for Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06373/) (2023)
- [Fast and Memory-Efficient Network Towards Efficient Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08397/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Balancing reconstruction quality versus model efficiency remains a critical challenge in lightweight single image super-resolution (SISR). Despite the prevalence of attention mechanisms in recent state-of-the-art SISR approaches that primarily emphasize or suppress feature maps, alternative architectural paradigms warrant further exploration. This paper introduces DiMoSR (Dilated Modulation Super-Resolution), a novel architecture that enhances feature representation through modulation to complement attention in lightweight SISR networks. The proposed approach leverages multi-branch dilated convolutions to capture rich contextual information over a wider receptive field while maintaining computational efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that DiMoSR outperforms state-of-the-art lightweight methods across diverse benchmark datasets, achieving superior PSNR and SSIM metrics with comparable or reduced computational complexity. Through comprehensive ablation studies, this work not only validates the effectiveness of DiMoSR but also provides critical insights into the interplay between attention mechanisms and feature modulation to guide future research in efficient network design. The code and model weights to reproduce our results are available at: https://github.com/makinyilmaz/DiMoSR