Noise Modeling in One Hour: Minimizing Preparation Efforts for Self-supervised Low-Light RAW Image Denoising

Abstract: Noise synthesis is a promising solution for addressing the data shortage problem in data-driven low-light RAW image denoising. However, accurate noise synthesis methods often necessitate labor-intensive calibration and profiling procedures during preparation, preventing them from landing to practice at scale. This work introduces a practically simple noise synthesis pipeline based on detailed analyses of noise properties and extensive justification of widespread techniques. Compared to other approaches, our proposed pipeline eliminates the cumbersome system gain calibration and signal-independent noise profiling steps, reducing the preparation time for noise synthesis from days to hours. Meanwhile, our method exhibits strong denoising performance, showing an up to 0.54dB PSNR improvement over the current state-of-the-art noise synthesis technique. Code is released at https://github.com/SonyResearch/raw_image_denoising