arXiv subjects

Judith Nickel

Publications and source records attributed to Judith Nickel.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Invertible ResNets for Inverse Imaging Problems: Competitive Performance with Provable Regularization Properties

Learning-based methods have demonstrated remarkable performance in solving inverse problems, particularly in image reconstruction tasks. Despite their success, these approaches often lack theoretical guarantees, which are crucial in sensitive applications such as medical imaging. Recent works by Arndt et al addressed this gap by analyzing a data-driven reconstruction method based on invertible residual networks (iResNets). They revealed that, under reasonable assumptions, this approach constitutes a convergent regularization scheme. However, the performance of the reconstruction method was only validated on academic toy problems and small-scale iResNet architectures. In this work, we address this gap by evaluating the performance of iResNets on two real-world imaging tasks: a linear blurring operator and a nonlinear diffusion operator. To do so, we compare the performance of iResNets against state-of-the-art neural networks, revealing their competitiveness at the expense of longer training times. Moreover, we numerically demonstrate the advantages of the iResNet's inherent stability and invertibility by showcasing increased robustness across various scenarios as well as interpretability of the learned operator, thereby reducing the black-box nature of the reconstruction scheme.

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arXiv2024

Optimized filter functions for filtered back projection reconstructions

The method of filtered back projection (FBP) is a widely used reconstruction technique in X-ray computerized tomography (CT), which is particularly important in clinical diagnostics. To reduce scanning times and radiation doses in medical CT settings, enhancing the reconstruction quality of the FBP method is essential. To this end, this paper focuses on analytically optimizing the applied filter function. We derive a formula for the filter that minimizes the expected squared $\mathrm{L}^2$-norm of the difference between the FBP reconstruction, given infinite noisy measurement data, and the true target function. Additionally, we adapt our derived filter to the case of finitely many measurements. The resulting filter functions have a closed-form representation, do not require a training dataset, and, thus, provide an easy-to-implement, out-of-the-box solution. Our theoretical findings are supported by numerical experiments based on both simulated and real CT data.

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arXiv2023

Bayesian view on the training of invertible residual networks for solving linear inverse problems

Learning-based methods for inverse problems, adapting to the data's inherent structure, have become ubiquitous in the last decade. Besides empirical investigations of their often remarkable performance, an increasing number of works addresses the issue of theoretical guarantees. Recently, [3] exploited invertible residual networks (iResNets) to learn provably convergent regularizations given reasonable assumptions. They enforced these guarantees by approximating the linear forward operator with an iResNet. Supervised training on relevant samples introduces data dependency into the approach. An open question in this context is to which extent the data's inherent structure influences the training outcome, i.e., the learned reconstruction scheme. Here we address this delicate interplay of training design and data dependency from a Bayesian perspective and shed light on opportunities and limitations. We resolve these limitations by analyzing reconstruction-based training of the inverses of iResNets, where we show that this optimization strategy introduces a level of data-dependency that cannot be achieved by approximation training. We further provide and discuss a series of numerical experiments underpinning and extending the theoretical findings.

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arXiv2023

Invertible residual networks in the context of regularization theory for linear inverse problems

Learned inverse problem solvers exhibit remarkable performance in applications like image reconstruction tasks. These data-driven reconstruction methods often follow a two-step scheme. First, one trains the often neural network-based reconstruction scheme via a dataset. Second, one applies the scheme to new measurements to obtain reconstructions. We follow these steps but parameterize the reconstruction scheme with invertible residual networks (iResNets). We demonstrate that the invertibility enables investigating the influence of the training and architecture choices on the resulting reconstruction scheme. For example, assuming local approximation properties of the network, we show that these schemes become convergent regularizations. In addition, the investigations reveal a formal link to the linear regularization theory of linear inverse problems and provide a nonlinear spectral regularization for particular architecture classes. On the numerical side, we investigate the local approximation property of selected trained architectures and present a series of experiments on the MNIST dataset that underpin and extend our theoretical findings.

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arXiv2020

Error analysis for filtered back projection reconstructions in Besov spaces

Filtered back projection (FBP) methods are the most widely used reconstruction algorithms in computerized tomography (CT). The ill-posedness of this inverse problem allows only an approximate reconstruction for given noisy data. Studying the resulting reconstruction error has been a most active field of research in the 1990s and has recently been revived in terms of optimal filter design and estimating the FBP approximation errors in general Sobolev spaces. However, the choice of Sobolev spaces is suboptimal for characterizing typical CT reconstructions. A widely used model are sums of characteristic functions, which are better modelled in terms of Besov spaces $\mathrm{B}^{\alpha,p}_q(\mathbb{R}^2)$. In particular $\mathrm{B}^{\alpha,1}_1(\mathbb{R}^2)$ with $\alpha \approx 1$ is a preferred model in image analysis for describing natural images. In case of noisy Radon data the total FBP reconstruction error $$\|f-f_L^\delta\| \le \|f-f_L\|+ \|f_L - f_L^\delta\|$$ splits into an approximation error and a data error, where $L$ serves as regularization parameter. In this paper, we study the approximation error of FBP reconstructions for target functions $f \in \mathrm{L}^1(\mathbb{R}^2) \cap \mathrm{B}^{\alpha,p}_q(\mathbb{R}^2)$ with positive $\alpha \not\in \mathbb{N}$ and $1 \leq p,q \leq \infty$. We prove that the $\mathrm{L}^p$-norm of the inherent FBP approximation error $f-f_L$ can be bounded above by \begin{equation*} \|f - f_L\|_{\mathrm{L}^p(\mathbb{R}^2)} \leq c_{\alpha,q,W} \, L^{-\alpha} \, |f|_{\mathrm{B}^{\alpha,p}_q(\mathbb{R}^2)} \end{equation*} under suitable assumptions on the utilized low-pass filter's window function $W$. This then extends by classical methods to estimates for the total reconstruction error.

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