Compression Artifact Reduction for 360-degree Images using Reference-based Deformable Convolutional Neural Network

In this paper, we propose an efficient reference-based compression artifact reduction network for 360-degree images in an equi-rectangular projection (ERP) domain. In our insight, conventional image restoration methods cannot be applied straightforwardly to 360-degree images due to the spherical distortion. To address this problem, we propose an adaptive disparity estimator using a deformable convolution to exploit correlation among 360-degree images. With the help of the proposed convolution, the disparity estimator establishes the spatial correspondence successfully between the ERPs and extract matched textures to be used for image restoration. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm provides reliable high-quality textures from the reference and improves the quality of the restored image as compared to the state-of-the-art single image restoration methods.