METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR GENERATING A SUPER-RESOLVED IMAGE FROM A SINGLE IMAGE

Known methods for generating super-resolved images from single input images have various disadvantages. An improved method for generating a super-resolved image from a single low-resolution input image comprises up-scaling the input image to generate an initial version of the super-resolved image, searching, for each patch of the low-resolution input image, similar low-resolution patches in first search windows within down-sampled versions of the input image, and determining, in less down-sampled versions of the input image, high-resolution patches that correspond to the similar low-resolution patches. The determined high-resolution patches are cropped, a second search window is determined in the initial version of the super-resolved image, and a best-matching position for each cropped high-resolution patch is searched within the second search window. Finally, each cropped high-resolution patch is added to the super-resolved image at its respective best-matching position.