Phase Retrieval using Expectation Consistent Signal Recovery Algorithm based on Hypernetwork

Phase retrieval (PR) is an important component in modern computational imaging systems. Many algorithms have been developed over the past half century. Recent advances in deep learning have opened up a new possibility for robust and fast PR. An emerging technique, called deep unfolding, provides a systematic connection between conventional model-based iterative algorithms and modern data-based deep learning. Unfolded algorithms, powered by data learning, have shown remarkable performance and convergence speed improvement over the original algorithms. Despite their potential, most existing unfolded algorithms are strictly confined to a fixed number of iterations when employing layer-dependent parameters. In this study, we develop a novel framework for deep unfolding to overcome the existing limitations. Even if our framework can be widely applied to general inverse problems, we take PR as an example in the paper. Our development is based on an unfolded generalized expectation consistent signal recovery (GEC-SR) algorithm, wherein damping factors are left for data-driven learning. In particular, we introduce a hypernetwork to generate the damping factors for GEC-SR. Instead of directly learning a set of optimal damping factors, the hypernetwork learns how to generate the optimal damping factors according to the clinical settings, thus ensuring its adaptivity to different scenarios. To make the hypernetwork work adapt to varying layer numbers, we use a recurrent architecture to develop a dynamic hypernetwork, which generates a damping factor that can vary online across layers. We also exploit a self-attention mechanism to enhance the robustness of the hypernetwork. Extensive experiments show that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing ones in convergence speed and accuracy, and still works well under very harsh settings, that many classical PR algorithms unstable or even fail.