Hybrid Transformer-CNN for Real Image Denoising

Transformer typically enjoys larger model capacity but higher computational loads than convolutional neural network (CNN) in vision tasks. In this letter, the advantages of such two networks are fused for achieving effective and efficient real image denoising. We propose a hybrid denoising model based on Transformer Encoder and Convolutional Decoder Network (TECDNet). The Transformer based on novel radial basis function (RBF) attention is used as encoder to improve the representation capability of overall model. In decoder, the residual CNN instead of Transformer is adopted to greatly reduce computational complexity of the whole denoising network. Extensive experimental results on real images show that TECDNet achieves the state-of-the-art denosing performance with relatively low computational cost.