AFMNet: an activation-free mural completion network via multi-head attention mechanism
Ancient murals often suffer from degradation, compromising their cultural significance. To address this, we propose AFMNet, a lightweight network based on a multi-head attention mechanism for high-quality mural completion. AFMNet effectively integrates multi-scale features and captures long-range dependencies, enhancing semantic consistency. Extensive experiments on a custom mural dataset and the Places2 benchmark demonstrate its superiority over competitive methods. Quantitatively, our method achieves a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of 34.42 dB on murals with low degradation (1-10% missing area) and reduces the parameter count by 34.4% compared to the baseline, showcasing its high efficiency. The results exhibit excellent visual fidelity with fewer artifacts, providing a valuable tool for the digital preservation of ancient murals.
Authors
- Ziyue You (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4663-2199)
- Guofang Xia
- Xi Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3587-820X)
- Ding Luo
- Chunmei Hu
- Xinjian Ma
Institutions
- Cultural Relics Institute Hebei Province (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping (CN)
- Heilongjiang University (CN)
- Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Heritage Science
- Published
- 2026-04-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-026-02379-w
- Primary Topic
- Public Spaces through Art
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture