Unsupervised Training of Convex Regularizers using Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Unsupervised learning is a training approach in the situation where ground truth data is unavailable, such as inverse imaging problems. We present an unsupervised Bayesian training approach to learning convex neural network regularizers using a fixed noisy dataset, based on a dual Markov chain estimation method. Compared to classical supervised adversarial regularization methods, where there is access to both clean images as well as unlimited to noisy copies, we demonstrate close performance on natural image Gaussian deconvolution and Poisson denoising tasks.

Unsupervised approaches based on optimal transport and convex analysis for inverse problems in imaging

Unsupervised deep learning approaches have recently become one of the crucial research areas in imaging owing to their ability to learn expressive and powerful reconstruction operators even when paired high-quality training data is scarcely available. In this chapter, we review theoretically principled unsupervised learning schemes for solving imaging inverse problems, with a particular focus on methods rooted in optimal transport and convex analysis. We begin by reviewing the optimal transport-based unsupervised approaches such as the cycle-consistency-based models and learned adversarial regularization methods, which have clear probabilistic interpretations. Subsequently, we give an overview of a recent line of works on provably convergent learned optimization algorithms applied to accelerate the solution of imaging inverse problems, alongside their dedicated unsupervised training schemes. We also survey a number of provably convergent plug-and-play algorithms (based on gradient-step deep denoisers), which are among the most important and widely applied unsupervised approaches for imaging problems. At the end of this survey, we provide an overview of a few related unsupervised learning frameworks that complement our focused schemes. Together with a detailed survey, we provide an overview of the key mathematical results that underlie the methods reviewed in the chapter to keep our discussion self-contained.

Noise-Free Sampling Algorithms via Regularized Wasserstein Proximals

We consider the problem of sampling from a distribution governed by a potential function. This work proposes an explicit score-based MCMC method that is deterministic, resulting in a deterministic evolution for particles rather than a stochastic differential equation evolution. The score term is given in closed form by a regularized Wasserstein proximal, using a kernel convolution that is approximated by sampling. We demonstrate fast convergence on various problems and show improved dimensional dependence of mixing time bounds for the case of Gaussian distributions compared to the unadjusted Langevin algorithm (ULA) and the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA). We additionally derive closed form expressions for the distributions at each iterate for quadratic potential functions, characterizing the variance reduction. Empirical results demonstrate that the particles behave in an organized manner, lying on level set contours of the potential. Moreover, the posterior mean estimator of the proposed method is shown to be closer to the maximum a-posteriori estimator compared to ULA and MALA, in the context of Bayesian logistic regression.

Provably Convergent Plug-and-Play Quasi-Newton Methods

Plug-and-Play (PnP) methods are a class of efficient iterative methods that aim to combine data fidelity terms and deep denoisers using classical optimization algorithms, such as ISTA or ADMM. Existing provable PnP methods impose heavy restrictions on the denoiser or fidelity function, such as nonexpansiveness or strict convexity. In this work, we propose a provable PnP method that imposes relatively light conditions based on proximal denoisers, and introduce a quasi-Newton step to greatly accelerate convergence. By specially parameterizing the deep denoiser as a gradient step, we further characterize the fixed-points of the quasi-Newton PnP algorithm.