SCUNet β Image Denoising (ONNX, full 8-variant bundle)
ONNX exports of SCUNet (Swin-Conv-UNet) β Kai Zhang et al., 2022. Hybrid CNN + Swin Transformer architecture for image denoising. This repo bundles all 8 published checkpoints from the upstream model_zoo/ so you get the full size / variant ladder in a single download.
Re-exported from upstream PyTorch weights. Provenance trail: Zhang et al. β cszn/SCUNet model_zoo/*.pth β torch.onnx.export (one pass per checkpoint) β these files.
Toolchain: torch 2.4.x (CUDA 12.4), timm latest, einops latest, thop latest, onnx latest, onnxruntime>=1.17, opset 17, do_constant_folding=True. Full conversion script: scripts/export-kair.ps1 in the DatumIngest repo (runs once per .pth checkpoint via -Model scunet-color or -Model scunet-gray).
Credit: Kai Zhang, Yawei Li, Jingyun Liang, Jiezhang Cao, Yulun Zhang, Hao Tang, Deng-Ping Fan, Radu Timofte, Luc Van Gool. Paper: "Practical Blind Image Denoising via Swin-Conv-UNet and Data Synthesis", 2022.
What this repo contains
Each variant ships as an .onnx (small graph file) + .onnx.data (~70 MB of external tensor data) sibling pair β torch's ONNX exporter externalizes weights at the size/opset combination used here. Both files must be present in the same directory at load time β the .onnx references the .data by relative filename.
Color variants (5)
| File pair | Variant | Training | When to use |
|---|---|---|---|
scunet_color_real_psnr.onnx[.data] |
Blind real-world, PSNR | Mixed synthetic degradations (Gaussian + JPEG + downsampling), L1/L2 pixel loss | Recommended default. General-purpose photo denoising. Stays faithful to input. |
scunet_color_real_gan.onnx[.data] |
Blind real-world, GAN | Same training data, adversarial + perceptual loss | Consumer photo cleanup β sharper output, invents plausible texture. Skip when fidelity matters. |
scunet_color_15.onnx[.data] |
Gaussian Ο=15 | White Gaussian noise Ο=15 (light) | Light noise (ISO grain). Beats blind on matched conditions; over-smooths cleaner inputs. |
scunet_color_25.onnx[.data] |
Gaussian Ο=25 | Ο=25 (moderate) | Standard denoising-benchmark reference β apples-to-apples comparison with other papers at Ο=25. |
scunet_color_50.onnx[.data] |
Gaussian Ο=50 | Ο=50 (heavy) | Extreme low-light / heavy-grain photos. Over-smooths anything cleaner. |
Grayscale variants (3)
| File pair | Variant | When to use |
|---|---|---|
scunet_gray_15.onnx[.data] |
Gaussian Ο=15 | Grayscale workflows (medical, document, B&W photo) at light noise. |
scunet_gray_25.onnx[.data] |
Gaussian Ο=25 | Standard grayscale-denoising benchmark level. |
scunet_gray_50.onnx[.data] |
Gaussian Ο=50 | Heavy-grain grayscale (astrophotography, degraded scans). |
The grayscale variants are ~3Γ cheaper to run than the color variants on grayscale inputs (they accept 1-channel input directly; the color variants need the gray channel replicated across RGB).
Input / output (all variants)
| Color (in_nc=3) | Gray (in_nc=1) | |
|---|---|---|
| Input name | image |
image |
| Input shape | [batch, 3, H, W] (NCHW) |
[batch, 1, H, W] |
| Input dtype | float32 | float32 |
| Input range | [0, 1] RGB |
[0, 1] Y |
| Constraint | H and W divisible by 8 | H and W divisible by 8 |
| Output name | denoised |
denoised |
| Output shape | [batch, 3, H, W] (same as input) |
[batch, 1, H, W] |
| Dynamic axes | batch, height, width | batch, height, width |
All variants share the same forward-pass shape; the only differences are the input channel count and the trained weights.
How to use
import onnxruntime as ort
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image
# Pick a variant. Both the .onnx and .onnx.data must be present in
# the same directory β ORT resolves the external data automatically.
sess = ort.InferenceSession("scunet_color_real_psnr.onnx")
img = Image.open("noisy.jpg").convert("RGB")
W, H = img.size
W8, H8 = (W // 8) * 8, (H // 8) * 8 # 8-align
img = img.crop((0, 0, W8, H8))
arr = np.asarray(img, dtype=np.float32) / 255.0 # HWC, [0,1]
arr = arr.transpose(2, 0, 1)[None, ...] # 1x3xHxW
result = sess.run(None, {"image": arr.astype(np.float32)})[0][0]
result = np.clip(result, 0.0, 1.0).transpose(1, 2, 0)
Image.fromarray((result * 255).astype(np.uint8)).save("denoised.jpg")
Which one should I use?
- General-purpose photo denoising:
scunet_color_real_psnrβ blind, faithful, no guesswork required. - Consumer photo cleanup (subjectively pretty matters more than ground truth):
scunet_color_real_gan. - Matched-Ο benchmark or known-noise scenario: pick the
_15,_25, or_50variant that matches your noise level. - Grayscale (medical / document / B&W): use
scunet_gray_*directly β ~3Γ faster than the color variant on gray inputs. - Comparison demos: the Ο-specialist variants are great for showing matched-vs-mismatched specialist behavior. Run the same noisy image through
scunet_color_{15,25,50}and the differences are visually obvious.
For fixed-Ο Gaussian denoising in a research-benchmark context, SwinIR's swinir_denoising_color_25 is the apples-to-apples transformer counterpart. For denoising + sharpening as one step, look at NAFNet (opencv/deblurring_nafnet) β different task (deblur) but adjacent.
License
Apache-2.0 β same as the upstream cszn/SCUNet repo. LICENSE file included.