Image Denoising Using Dual Convolutional Neural Network with Skip Connection

In recent years, deep convolutional neural networks have shown superior performance in image denoising. However, deep network structures often come with a large number of model parameters, leading to high training costs and long inference times, limiting their practical application in denoising tasks. This paper proposes a new dual convolutional denoising network with skip connections(DECDNet), which achieves an ideal balance between denoising effect and network complexity. The proposed DECDNet consists of a noise estimation network, a multi-scale feature extraction network, a dual convolutional neural network, and dual attention mechanisms. The noise estimation network is used to estimate the noise level map, and the multi-scale feature extraction network is combined to improve the model's flexibility in obtaining image features. The dual convolutional neural network branch design includes convolution and dilated convolution interactive connections, with the lower branch consisting of dilated convolution layers, and both branches using skip connections. Experiments show that compared with other models, the proposed DECDNet achieves superior PSNR and SSIM values at all compared noise levels, especially at higher noise levels, showing robustness to images with higher noise levels. It also demonstrates better visual effects, maintaining a balance between denoising and detail preservation.