Comparative study of deep learning algorithms for atomic force microscopy image denoising

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) enables direct visualisation of surface topography at the nanoscale. However, post-processing is generally required to obtain accurate, precise, and reliable AFM images owing to the presence of image artefacts. In this study, we compared and analysed state-of-the-art deep learning models, namely MPRNet, HINet, Uformer, and Restormer, with respect to denoising AFM images containing four types of noise. Specifically, these algorithms’ denoising performance and inference time on AFM images were compared with those of conventional methods and previous studies. Through a comparative analysis, we found that the most efficient and the most effective models were Restormer and HINet, respectively. The code, models, and data used in this work are available at https://github.com/hoichanjung/AFM_Image_Denoising.