Towards Learning a Self-inverse Network for Bidirectional Image-to-image Translation

The one-to-one mapping is necessary for many bidirectional image-to-image translation applications, such as MRI image synthesis as MRI images are unique to the patient. State-of-the-art approaches for image synthesis from domain X to domain Y learn a convolutional neural network that meticulously maps between the domains. A different network is typically implemented to map along the opposite direction, from Y to X. In this paper, we explore the possibility of only wielding one network for bi-directional image synthesis. In other words, such an autonomous learning network implements a self-inverse function. A self-inverse network shares several distinct advantages: only one network instead of two, better generalization and more restricted parameter space. Most importantly, a self-inverse function guarantees a one-to-one mapping, a property that cannot be guaranteed by earlier approaches that are not self-inverse. The experiments on three datasets show that, compared with the baseline approaches that use two separate models for the image synthesis along two directions, our self-inverse network achieves better synthesis results in terms of standard metrics. Finally, our sensitivity analysis confirms the feasibility of learning a self-inverse function for the bidirectional image translation.