Physics-Informed Untrained Learning for RGB-Guided Superresolution Single-Pixel Hyperspectral Imaging

arXiv cs.CV / 4/7/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper addresses hyperspectral single-pixel imaging as a severely ill-posed inverse problem under extremely low sampling rates, where existing approaches struggle to recover high-fidelity spatial and spectral details.
  • It proposes an end-to-end physics-informed, training-data-free framework that uses untrained neural networks together with RGB guidance to jointly reconstruct hyperspectral content and perform spatial super-resolution.
  • The method combines a three-stage pipeline: LS-RGP initialization via RGB-derived grayscale priors, an untrained hyperspectral recovery network (UHRNet) using measurement consistency and hybrid regularization, and a transformer-based untrained super-resolution network (USRNet) that transfers high-frequency detail from the RGB guide through cross-modal attention.
  • Experiments on benchmark datasets show improved reconstruction accuracy and spectral fidelity over prior state-of-the-art methods, while a physical proof-of-concept demonstrates recovery of a 144-band hyperspectral cube at only 6.25% sampling rate.
  • Overall, the work positions the approach as a robust and data-efficient solution for computational hyperspectral imaging by reducing reliance on large pretrained datasets.

Abstract

Single-pixel imaging (SPI) offers a cost-effective route to hyperspectral acquisition but struggles to recover high-fidelity spatial and spectral details under extremely low sampling rates, a severely ill-posed inverse problem. While deep learning has shown potential, existing data-driven methods demand large-scale pretraining datasets that are often impractical in hyperspectral imaging. To overcome this limitation, we propose an end-to-end physics-informed framework that leverages untrained neural networks and RGB guidance for joint hyperspectral reconstruction and super-resolution without any external training data. The framework comprises three physically grounded stages: (1) a Regularized Least-Squares method with RGB-derived Grayscale Priors (LS-RGP) that initializes the solution by exploiting cross-modal structural correlations; (2) an Untrained Hyperspectral Recovery Network (UHRNet) that refines the reconstruction through measurement consistency and hybrid regularization; and (3) a Transformer-based Untrained Super-Resolution Network (USRNet) that upsamples the spatial resolution via cross-modal attention, transferring high-frequency details from the RGB guide. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our approach significantly surpasses state-of-the-art algorithms in both reconstruction accuracy and spectral fidelity. Moreover, a proof-of-concept experiment using a physical single-pixel imaging system validates the framework's practical applicability, successfully reconstructing a 144-band hyperspectral data cube at a mere 6.25% sampling rate. The proposed method thus provides a robust, data-efficient solution for computational hyperspectral imaging.