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  4. Dark Noise Diffusion: Noise Synthesis for Low-Light Image Denoising
 
research article

Dark Noise Diffusion: Noise Synthesis for Low-Light Image Denoising

Lu, Liying  
•
Achddou, Raphaël  
•
Süsstrunk, Sabine  
2025
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

Low-light photography produces images with low signal-to-noise ratios due to limited photons. In such conditions, common approximations like the Gaussian noise model fall short, and many denoising techniques fail to remove noise effectively. Although deep-learning methods perform well, they require large datasets of paired images that are impractical to acquire. As a remedy, synthesizing realistic low-light noise has gained significant attention. In this paper, we investigate the ability of diffusion models to capture the complex distribution of low-light noise. We show that a naive application of conventional diffusion models is inadequate for this task and propose three key adaptations that enable high-precision noise generation: a two-branch architecture to better model signal-dependent and signal-independent noise, the incorporation of positional information to capture fixed-pattern noise, and a tailored diffusion noise schedule. Consequently, our model enables the generation of large datasets for training low-light denoising networks, leading to state-of-the-art performance. Through comprehensive analysis, including statistical evaluation and noise decomposition, we provide deeper insights into the characteristics of the generated data.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1109/TPAMI.2025.3598330
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-105013195781

Author(s)
Lu, Liying  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Achddou, Raphaël  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Süsstrunk, Sabine  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Date Issued

2025

Published in
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Subjects

Computational Photography

•

Diffusion Models

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Image Denoising

•

Low-light Imaging

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
IVRL  
Available on Infoscience
August 25, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/253427
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