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Why the noise model matters: a performance gap in learned regularization

delete2026-02-27
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PRE
AI
B
Banert, Sebastian
C
Christoph Brauer
L
Lorenz, Dirk *
T
Tondji, Lionel
DOI:10.1088/1361-6420/ae3f4cdelete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
This article addresses the challenge of learning effective regularizers for linear inverse problems. We analyze and compare several types of learned variational regularization against the theoretical benchmark of the optimal affine reconstruction, i.e. the best possible affine linear map for minimizing the mean squared error. It is known that this optimal reconstruction can be achieved using Tikhonov regularization, but this requires precise knowledge of the noise covariance to properly weight the data fidelity term. However, in many practical applications, noise statistics are unknown. We therefore investigate the performance of regularization methods learned without access to this noise information, focusing on Tikhonov, Lavrentiev, and quadratic regularization. Our theoretical analysis and numerical experiments demonstrate that for non-white noise, a performance gap emerges between these methods and the optimal affine reconstruction. Furthermore, we show that these different types of regularization yield distinct results, highlighting that the choice of regularizer structure is critical when the noise model is not explicitly learned. Our findings underscore the significant value of accurately modeling or co-learning noise statistics in data-driven regularization.
Keywords:
Tikhonov regularization
supervised learning
Lavrentiev regularization
variational regularization

Journal

I
Inverse Problems
IF:
2.1
Papers:
78
Citations:
8.4K

Organization

H
helmholtz association
Scholars:
5.6K
Papers: 2.1K
Citations: 6
U
university of bremen
Scholars:
971
Papers: 502
Citations: 0
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