Journal of Polymer & Composites Review Article Special issue
A Hybrid model of ResNet50 integrated U-Net for image Denoising for Polymer and Composite Microstructure Analysis
Abstract
In digital era a high-quality imaging plays a very important role in polymer and composite material characterization features such as fiber-matrix interfaces, voids, microcracks cause problems in mechanical and functional properties. Polymer imaging includes optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, due to sensor limitation, environmental conditions add noise to the image and reduce quality of image. The noise degrades image quality, and it leads to reduce reliability in material analysis. So, there is need to reduce noise while preserving image features are desperately needed. To solve this problem, a hybrid model is introducing that uses deep learning models for noise reduction. Proposed method improves feature extraction by using skip connections and an attention mechanism, which prioritizes important information that is important for noise reduction. The method utilizes a diverse multimodal data set to train a robust noise reduction model based on the refined U-Net architecture, making it suitable for noise-prone imaging scenarios encountered in polymer science and materials engineering. Performance further enhanced with transfer learning from ResNet50. This approach successfully reduces noise. The proposed method shows strong capabilities to handle multi noise type and data quality across diverse applications, including polymer microstructure analysis, defect detection, and material quality assessment.
Keywords
References (24)
- ÇETİNKAYA E, KIRAÇ MF. Image denoising using deep convolutional autoencoder with feature pyramids. TURKISH JOURNAL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING & COMPUTER SCIENCES. 2020;28(4):2096-2109. doi:10.3906/elk-1911-138
- T. Salimans, I. Goodfellow, W. Zaremba, V. Cheung, A. Radford, and X. Chen, “Improved Techniques for Training GANs,” Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst., pp. 2234–2242, Jun. 2016, Accessed: May 10, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03498
- Gonog L, Zhou Y. A Review: Generative Adversarial Networks. 2019 14th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA). 2019:505-510. doi:10.1109/iciea.2019.8833686
- O. Kupyn, V. Budzan, M. Mykhailych, D. Mishkin, and J. Matas, “DeblurGAN: Blind Motion Deblurring Using Conditional Adversarial Networks”, Accessed: May 10, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://github.com/KupynOrest/DeblurGAN
- Ledig C, Theis L, Huszar F, Caballero J, Cunningham A, Acosta A, et al. Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network. 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). 2017:105-114. doi:10.1109/cvpr.2017.19
- J. Zhu, J. Zhang, Y. Cao, and Z. Wang, “Image Guided Depth Enhancement via Deep Fusion and Local Linear Regularization”.
- P. Riot, A. Almansa, Y. Gousseau, F. Tupin, and A. Almansa, “Penalizing local correlations in the residual improves image denoising performance”, Accessed: May 10, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://hal.science/hal-01341968v1
- R. Li, C.-T. Li, and Y. Guan, “INCREMENTAL UPDATE OF FEATURE EXTRACTOR FOR CAMERA IDENTIFICATION”.
- Gan Y, Angelini E, Laine A, Hendon C. BM3D-based ultrasound image denoising via brushlet thresholding. 2015 IEEE 12th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI). 2015:667-670. doi:10.1109/isbi.2015.7163961
- A. Scholefield and P. L. Dragotti, “IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING 1 Quadtree Structured Image Approximation for Denoising and Interpolation,” 2013.
- Dong J, Kandemir A, Hamerton I. Microstructural characterisation of fibre-hybrid polymer composites using U-Net on optical images. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing. 2025;190:108569. doi:10.1016/j.compositesa.2024.108569
- K. Thomas, “International Journal of Engineering & Advanced Technology (IJEAT),” International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (IJEAT), pp. 2249–8958, 2020, doi:10.35940/ijeat.F1555.1010120.
- El-Shafai W, Abd El-Nabi S, M. El-Rabaie ES, M. Ali A, F. Soliman N, D. Algarni A, et al. Efficient Deep-Learning-Based Autoencoder Denoising Approach for Medical Image Diagnosis. Computers, Materials & Continua. 2022;70(3):6107-6125. doi:10.32604/cmc.2022.020698
- P. Venkataraman, “Image Denoising Using Convolutional Autoencoder”.
- Patil AP, Pramod A, Harish A, Singh K, Purushotham K. An Approach to Image Denoising Using Autoencoders and Spatial Filters for Gaussian Noise. 2021 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (Confluence). 2021:454-458. doi:10.1109/confluence51648.2021.9377166
- M. K. , N. R. , K. E. H. , A. H. E. and O. M. Jasim, “ Image noise removal techniques: A comparative analysis,” International Journal of Science and Applied Information Technology, pp. 24–29, 2019.
- Tian C, Xu Y, Fei L, Yan K. Deep Learning for Image Denoising: A Survey. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. 2019:563-572. doi:10.1007/978-981-13-5841-8_59
- Raj A. Image Denoising Using Python and Machine Learning. International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology. 2023;11(5):7230-7235. doi:10.22214/ijraset.2023.53406
- Wang Z, Wang L, Duan S, Li Y. An Image Denoising Method Based on Deep Residual GAN. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 2020;1550(3):032127. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1550/3/032127
- Ruikai C. Research Progress in Image Denoising Algorithms Based on Deep Learning. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 2019;1345(4):042055. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1345/4/042055
- Shen L, Zhao B, Li Q, Zhang C, Sun X, Peng B. Local to non-local: Multi-scale progressive attention network for image restoration. Computer Vision and Image Understanding. 2023;233:103725. doi:10.1016/j.cviu.2023.103725
- Zubair M, Md Rais H, Alazemi T. A Novel Attention-Guided Enhanced U-Net With Hybrid Edge-Preserving Structural Loss for Low-Dose CT Image Denoising. IEEE Access. 2025;13:6909-6923. doi:10.1109/access.2025.3526619
- Gonog L, Zhou Y. A Review: Generative Adversarial Networks. 2019 14th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA). 2019:505-510. doi:10.1109/iciea.2019.8833686
- Z. Zhang, X. Du, F. Gao, L. Chen, and B. Li, “An improved u-net method for denoising ultrasonic echo signals in carbon fiber composites,” Ultrasonics, vol. 157, p. 107782, Jan. 2026, doi:10.1016/J.ULTRAS.2025.107782).