Performance analysis of fuzzy aggregation operations for combining classifiers for natural textures in images

One objective for classifying pixels belonging to specific textures in natural images is to achieve the best performance in classification as possible. We propose a new unsupervised hybrid classifier. The base classifiers for hybridization are the Fuzzy Clustering and the parametric Bayesian, both supervised and selected by their well-tested performance, as reported in the literature. During the training phase we estimate the parameters of each classifier. During the decision phase we apply fuzzy aggregation operators for making the hybridization. The design of the unsupervised classifier from supervised base classifiers and the automatic computation of the final decision with fuzzy aggregation operations, make the main contributions of this paper

A Self-Organizing Neural System for Learning to Recognize Textured Scenes

A self-organizing ARTEX model is developed to categorize and classify textured image regions. ARTEX specializes the FACADE model of how the visual cortex sees, and the ART model of how temporal and prefrontal cortices interact with the hippocampal system to learn visual recognition categories and their names. FACADE processing generates a vector of boundary and surface properties, notably texture and brightness properties, by utilizing multi-scale filtering, competition, and diffusive filling-in. Its context-sensitive local measures of textured scenes can be used to recognize scenic properties that gradually change across space, as well a.s abrupt texture boundaries. ART incrementally learns recognition categories that classify FACADE output vectors, class names of these categories, and their probabilities. Top-down expectations within ART encode learned prototypes that pay attention to expected visual features. When novel visual information creates a poor match with the best existing category prototype, a memory search selects a new category with which classify the novel data. ARTEX is compared with psychophysical data, and is benchmarked on classification of natural textures and synthetic aperture radar images. It outperforms state-of-the-art systems that use rule-based, backpropagation, and K-nearest neighbor classifiers.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657

A Self-Organizing System for Classifying Complex Images: Natural Textures and Synthetic Aperture Radar

A self-organizing architecture is developed for image region classification. The system consists of a preprocessor that utilizes multi-scale filtering, competition, cooperation, and diffusion to compute a vector of image boundary and surface properties, notably texture and brightness properties. This vector inputs to a system that incrementally learns noisy multidimensional mappings and their probabilities. The architecture is applied to difficult real-world image classification problems, including classification of synthetic aperture radar and natural texture images, and outperforms a recent state-of-the-art system at classifying natural texturns.Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657, N00014-91-J-4100); Advanced Research Projects Agency (N00014-92-J-4015); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-92-J-0225, F49620-92-J-0334); National Science Foundation (IRI-90-00530, IRI-90-24877

A Self-Organizing System for Classifying Complex Images: Natural Textures and Synthetic Aperture Radar

A self-organizing architecture is developed for image region classification. The system consists of a preprocessor that utilizes multi-scale filtering, competition, cooperation, and diffusion to compute a vector of image boundary and surface properties, notably texture and brightness properties. This vector inputs to a system that incrementally learns noisy multidimensional mappings and their probabilities. The architecture is applied to difficult real-world image classification problems, including classification of synthetic aperture radar and natural texture images, and outperforms a recent state-of-the-art system at classifying natural texturns.Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657, N00014-91-J-4100); Advanced Research Projects Agency (N00014-92-J-4015); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-92-J-0225, F49620-92-J-0334); National Science Foundation (IRI-90-00530, IRI-90-24877

Interpreting Deep Visual Representations via Network Dissection

The success of recent deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) depends on learning hidden representations that can summarize the important factors of variation behind the data. However, CNNs often criticized as being black boxes that lack interpretability, since they have millions of unexplained model parameters. In this work, we describe Network Dissection, a method that interprets networks by providing labels for the units of their deep visual representations. The proposed method quantifies the interpretability of CNN representations by evaluating the alignment between individual hidden units and a set of visual semantic concepts. By identifying the best alignments, units are given human interpretable labels across a range of objects, parts, scenes, textures, materials, and colors. The method reveals that deep representations are more transparent and interpretable than expected: we find that representations are significantly more interpretable than they would be under a random equivalently powerful basis. We apply the method to interpret and compare the latent representations of various network architectures trained to solve different supervised and self-supervised training tasks. We then examine factors affecting the network interpretability such as the number of the training iterations, regularizations, different initializations, and the network depth and width. Finally we show that the interpreted units can be used to provide explicit explanations of a prediction given by a CNN for an image. Our results highlight that interpretability is an important property of deep neural networks that provides new insights into their hierarchical structure.Comment: *B. Zhou and D. Bau contributed equally to this work. 15 pages, 27 figure

A critical analysis of self-supervision, or what we can learn from a single image

We look critically at popular self-supervision techniques for learning deep convolutional neural networks without manual labels. We show that three different and representative methods, BiGAN, RotNet and DeepCluster, can learn the first few layers of a convolutional network from a single image as well as using millions of images and manual labels, provided that strong data augmentation is used. However, for deeper layers the gap with manual supervision cannot be closed even if millions of unlabelled images are used for training. We conclude that: (1) the weights of the early layers of deep networks contain limited information about the statistics of natural images, that (2) such low-level statistics can be learned through self-supervision just as well as through strong supervision, and that (3) the low-level statistics can be captured via synthetic transformations instead of using a large image dataset.Comment: Accepted paper at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 202

A hybrid deep learning approach for texture analysis

Texture classification is a problem that has various applications such as remote sensing and forest species recognition. Solutions tend to be custom fit to the dataset used but fails to generalize. The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in combination with Support Vector Machine (SVM) form a robust selection between powerful invariant feature extractor and accurate classifier. The fusion of classifiers shows the stability of classification among different datasets and slight improvement compared to state of the art methods. The classifiers are fused using confusion matrix after independent training of each using the same training set, then put to test. Statistical information about each classifier is fed to a confusion matrix that generates two confidence measures used in building two binary classifiers. The binary classifier is allowed to activate or deactivate a classifier during testing time based on a confidence measure obtained from the confusion matrix. The method obtained results approaching state of the art with a difference less than 1% in classification success rates. Moreover, the method was able to maintain this success rate among different datasets while other methods had failed to obtain similar stability. Two datasets had been used in this research Brodatz and Kylberg where the results came 98.17% and 99.70%. In comparison to conventional methods in the literature, it came as 98.9% and 99.64% respectively

Machine learning methods for discriminating natural targets in seabed imagery

The research in this thesis concerns feature-based machine learning processes and methods for discriminating qualitative natural targets in seabed imagery. The applications considered, typically involve time-consuming manual processing stages in an industrial setting. An aim of the research is to facilitate a means of assisting human analysts by expediting the tedious interpretative tasks, using machine methods. Some novel approaches are devised and investigated for solving the application problems. These investigations are compartmentalised in four coherent case studies linked by common underlying technical themes and methods. The first study addresses pockmark discrimination in a digital bathymetry model. Manual identification and mapping of even a relatively small number of these landform objects is an expensive process. A novel, supervised machine learning approach to automating the task is presented. The process maps the boundaries of ≈ 2000 pockmarks in seconds - a task that would take days for a human analyst to complete. The second case study investigates different feature creation methods for automatically discriminating sidescan sonar image textures characteristic of Sabellaria spinulosa colonisation. Results from a comparison of several textural feature creation methods on sonar waterfall imagery show that Gabor filter banks yield some of the best results. A further empirical investigation into the filter bank features created on sonar mosaic imagery leads to the identification of a useful configuration and filter parameter ranges for discriminating the target textures in the imagery. Feature saliency estimation is a vital stage in the machine process. Case study three concerns distance measures for the evaluation and ranking of features on sonar imagery. Two novel consensus methods for creating a more robust ranking are proposed. Experimental results show that the consensus methods can improve robustness over a range of feature parameterisations and various seabed texture classification tasks. The final case study is more qualitative in nature and brings together a number of ideas, applied to the classification of target regions in real-world sonar mosaic imagery. A number of technical challenges arose and these were surmounted by devising a novel, hybrid unsupervised method. This fully automated machine approach was compared with a supervised approach in an application to the problem of image-based sediment type discrimination. The hybrid unsupervised method produces a plausible class map in a few minutes of processing time. It is concluded that the versatile, novel process should be generalisable to the discrimination of other subjective natural targets in real-world seabed imagery, such as Sabellaria textures and pockmarks (with appropriate features and feature tuning.) Further, the full automation of pockmark and Sabellaria discrimination is feasible within this framework