Efficient Image Super-Resolution via Symmetric Visual Attention Network

In recent years, efficient super-resolution research has focused on reducing model complexity and improving efficiency by leveraging deep small-kernel convolution, but it has the problem of a small receptive field, which leads to a limited ability of the network to reconstruct details. Large kernel convolution can provide a large receptive field and lead to a substantial enhancement in the quality of image reconstruction, but its computational cost is too high. To minimize the model’s parameter count and achieve efficient super-resolution reconstruction, this study introduces a symmetric visual attention network. The network decomposes the large kernel convolution into three different lightweight and efficient convolutions. It then forms a bottleneck structure by leveraging the varied receptive field sizes of these convolutions in combination. The attention mechanism is integrated to create a bottleneck attention module, enhancing the network’s feature awareness. Furthermore, the bottleneck attention modules are symmetrically arranged to construct a symmetric large kernel attention block, thereby further enhancing the network’s capability to extract deep features. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves competitive quantitative metrics when compared to other lightweight super-resolution methods, and the details of the reconstructed images are enhanced. With only 183K parameters, the model achieves a lightweight yet high-quality super-resolution model, offering a novel solution approach for efficient super-resolution.