A Bilevel Optimization Approach for Parameter Learning in Variational Models

In this work we consider the problem of parameter learning for variational image denoising models. The learning problem is formulated as a bilevel optimization problem, where the lower-level problem is given by the variational model and the higher-level problem is expressed by means of a loss function that penalizes errors between the solution of the lower-level problem and the ground truth data. We consider a class of image denoising models incorporating ₚ-norm--based analysis priors using a fixed set of linear operators. We devise semismooth Newton methods for solving the resulting nonsmooth bilevel optimization problems and show that the optimized image denoising models can achieve state-of-the-art performance.