Application of Image Super-Resolution to SDO/HMI magnetograms using Deep Learning

Image super-resolution (SR) is a technique that enhances the resolution of a low resolution image. In this study, we use three SR models (RCAN, ProSRGAN and Bicubic) for enhancing solar SDO/HMI magnetograms using deep learning. Each model generates a high resolution HMI image from a low resolution HMI image (4 by 4 binning). The pixel resolution of HMI is about 0.504 arcsec. Deep learning networks try to find the hidden equation between low resolution image and high resolution image from given input and the corresponding output image. In this study, we trained three models with HMI images in 2014 and test them with HMI images in 2015. We find that the RCAN model achieves higher quality results than the other two methods in view of both visual aspects and metrics: 31.40 peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR), Correlation Coefficient (0.96), Root mean square error (RMSE) is 0.004. This result is also much better than the conventional bi-cubic interpolation. We apply this model to a full-resolution SDO/HMI image and compare the generated image with the corresponding Hinode NFI magnetogram. As a result, we get a very high correlation (0.92) between the generated SR magnetogram and the Hinode one.