# Towards Efficient Image Deblurring for Edge Deployment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.11685 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11685/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [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)
- [DeblurGAN: Blind Motion Deblurring Using Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07064/) (2017)
- [Scale-recurrent Network for Deep Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01770/) (2018)
- [HINet: Half Instance Normalization Network for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06086/) (2021)
- [Deep Stacked Hierarchical Multi-patch Network for Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03468/) (2019)
- [Zero-Cost Proxies for Lightweight NAS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08134/) (2021)
- [Deblurring by Realistic Blurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01860/) (2020)
- [Human-Aware Motion Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06816/) (2020)
- [Defocus Deblurring Using Dual-Pixel Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00305/) (2020)
- [Multi-Temporal Recurrent Neural Networks For Progressive Non-Uniform Single Image Deblurring With Incremental Temporal Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07410/) (2019)
- [Iterative Filter Adaptive Network for Single Image Defocus Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.13610/) (2021)
- [Single Image Defocus Deblurring Using Kernel-Sharing Parallel Atrous Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09108/) (2021)
- [KBNet: Kernel Basis Network for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02881/) (2023)
- [Deploying Image Deblurring across Mobile Devices: A Perspective of Quality and Latency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12599/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image deblurring is a critical stage in mobile image signal processing pipelines, where the ability to restore fine structures and textures must be balanced with real-time constraints on edge devices. While recent deep networks such as transformers and activation-free architectures achieve state-of-the-art (SOTA) accuracy, their efficiency is typically measured in FLOPs or parameters, which do not correlate with latency on embedded hardware. We propose a hardware-aware adaptation framework that restructures existing models through sensitivity-guided block substitution, surrogate distillation, and training-free multi-objective search driven by device profiling. Applied to the 36-block NAFNet baseline, the optimized variants achieve up to 55% reduction in GMACs compared to the recent transformer-based SOTA while maintaining competitive accuracy. Most importantly, on-device deployment yields a 1.25X latency improvement over the baseline. Experiments on motion deblurring (GoPro), defocus deblurring (DPDD), and auxiliary benchmarks (RealBlur-J/R, HIDE) demonstrate the generality of the approach, while comparisons with prior efficient baselines confirm its accuracy-efficiency trade-off. These results establish feedback-driven adaptation as a principled strategy for bridging the gap between algorithmic design and deployment-ready deblurring models.