UP-Net: A multi-head architecture for reading and efficiently segmenting distorted QR codes

Semantic segmentation is essential in machine vision but susceptible to noise and distortions that often appear in real-world images. We propose UPlus-Net (UP-Net), a deep-learning architecture based on the U-Net encoder-decoder architecture. We address the limitations of U-Net by intro-ducing a mul...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ebrahim Parcham, Mahdi Ilbeygi, Vahid Hajipour, Ali Gharaei, Mahdi Mokhtari, Mostafa Foroutan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) 2025-06-01
Series:ETRI Journal
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.4218/etrij.2023-0540
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Summary:Semantic segmentation is essential in machine vision but susceptible to noise and distortions that often appear in real-world images. We propose UPlus-Net (UP-Net), a deep-learning architecture based on the U-Net encoder-decoder architecture. We address the limitations of U-Net by intro-ducing a multi-head architecture in UP-Net to properly handle segmentation challenges. In addition, we evaluate UP-Net for decoding distorted quick-response (QR) codes heavily polluted by noise. Experimental results confirm that UP-Net outperforms existing QR reader mobile applications, highlighting the UP-Net ability to handle challenging images. Unlike existing methods focused solely on QR code reading or segmentation, UP-Net offers a combined solution, efficiently and accurately reading distorted QR codes while perform-ing high-quality semantic segmentation. These unique characteristics render UP-Net promising for applications demanding robust image analysis in chal-lenging environments.
ISSN:1225-6463
2233-7326