Bridging the Machine-Human Gap in Blurred-Image Classification via Entropy Maximisation

Recent studies point to an accuracy gap between humans and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models when classifying blurred images, with humans outperforming ANNs. To bridge this gap, we introduce a spectral channel-based range-constrained entropy merit function, from which we devise a zero-phase, circular symmetric blind deblurring method. We apply it as a pre-processing step for image classification and test it using pre-trained classification models and images blurred by Gaussian kernels. We compare our method to state-of-the-art restoration methods, showing its superiority, effectively bridging the machine-human gap for most models and blur levels. Our results also rank higher than the competitors in no-reference and full-reference image quality metrics. Notwithstanding the limitation to zero-phase blur, this work shows that, for image pre-processing aimed at visual tasks, it may be advantageous to use merit functions based on vision science and information theory, rather than on the expected error to the latent image.