Adaptive example-based super-resolution using kernel PCA with a novel classification approach

An adaptive example-based super-resolution (SR) using kernel principal component analysis (PCA) with a novel classification approach is presented in this paper. In order to enable estimation of missing high-frequency components for each kind of texture in target low-resolution (LR) images, the proposed method performs clustering of high-resolution (HR) patches clipped from training HR images in advance. Based on two nonlinear eigenspaces, respectively, generated from HR patches and their corresponding low-frequency components in each cluster, an inverse map, which can estimate missing high-frequency components from only the known lowfrequency components, is derived. Furthermore, by monitoring errors caused in the above estimation process, the proposed method enables adaptive selection of the optimal cluster for each target local patch, and this corresponds to the novel classification approach in our method. Then, by combining the above two approaches, the proposed method can adaptively estimate the missing high-frequency components, and successful reconstruction of the HR image is realized.