mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

SP3: Spherical Priors for Plug-and-Play Restoration

arXiv 2606.16396 ↗First posted 15 Jun 2026cs.CV eess.IVcited by 1

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Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we introduce SP3, a novel Plug-and-Play algorithm that accelerates maximum a posteriori image restoration by replacing denoisers with Spherical Encoders (SE) as generative priors. SP3 approximates the intractable proximal prior step by utilizing the SE tightly structured latent space as a robust projection onto the natural image manifold. Alternating this projection with a closed-form data-consistency step, via Half-Quadratic Splitting, achieves stable convergence without requiring gradient computation during inference. This unique formulation unlocks "anytime" restoration capabilities, producing sharp, plausible images from the first iteration. Evaluations across a variety of image restoration tasks demonstrate that SP3 achieves perceptual quality comparable to state-of-the-art zero-shot diffusion and flow methods while being 3-630× faster.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 70 of its 89 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2026.

Builds on

70 of 89 references.

References · 70

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38 more
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  1. 2026Sphere Encoder 2cited by 0