Astronomical Image Denoising Using AttentionGAN

Abstract

Denoising astronomical images is a significant challenge in the field of astronomical data processing. Image data acquired from astronomical sources typically contains noise from various sources. The study aims to investigate the denoising of astronomical images using an image-to-image translation approach with AttentionGAN method. This method combines attention-guided techniques with a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model to improve the quality of noisy astronomical images. Attention-guided technique allows the model to learn the most important features of the image and guide the image generation process. This approach has been tested on several images in different domains, each with varying levels of noise. The results shows that AttentionGAN method produces denoised images with better and sharper quality than several other denoising methods. Two databases, The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PAN-STARRS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), were used in this research. Images acquired from PAN-STARRS contain noise, while images acquired from SDSS are clean. Overall, this research contributes to improving the quality of astronomical images by demonstrating the effectiveness of the AttentionGAN method in denoising noisy astronomical images. We employed denoising techniques using CycleGAN and AttentionGAN and evaluated them using metrics such as PSNR, SSIM, and FID. The analysis showed that the AttentionGAN model outperformed CycleGAN. We also conducted ablation studies to further investigate the components of the AttentionGAN model. This study provides a foundation for future research in the field of astronomical data processing, which has the potential to enhance image quality.