Efficiently Coevolving Deep Neural Networks and Data Augmentations

Automated image classification is an essential task of the computer vision field. The tagging of images into a set of predefined groups is referred to as image classification. The implementation of computer vision to automate image classification would be beneficial because manual image evaluation and identification can be time-consuming, particularly when there are many images of different classes. Deep learning approaches are proven to overperform existing machine learning techniques in many fields in recent years, and computer vision is one of the most notable examples. The very deep neural network (VDCNN) is a powerful deep learning model for image classification, and this paper examines it briefly using MNIST handwritten digit dataset. This dataset is used to prove the efficacy of very deep neural networks over other deep learning models. The proposed study aims to comprehend the very deep neural network architecture used to accomplish a handwritten digit recognition task. The feasibility of the proposed model is evaluated using mean accuracy, validation accuracy, and standard deviation. The study results of the very deep neural network model are compared to a convolutional neural network and convolutional neural network with batch normalization. According to the results of the comparison study, very deep neural networks achieve high accuracy of 99.1% for a handwritten dataset. The outcome of the proposed work is used to interpret how well a very deep neural network performs when compared to the other two models of deep neural networks. This proposed architecture may be used to automate the classification of handwritten digits dataset.

Video hyperlinking represents a classical example of multimodal problems. Common approaches to such problems are early fusion of the initial modalities and crossmodal translation from one modality to the other. Recently, deep neural networks, especially deep autoencoders, have proven promising both for crossmodal translation and for early fusion via multimodal embedding. A particular architecture, bidirectional symmetrical deep neural networks, have been proven to yield improved multimodal embeddings over classical autoencoders, while also being able to perform crossmodal translation. In this work, we focus firstly at evaluating good single-modal continuous representations both for textual and for visual information. Word2Vec and paragraph vectors are evaluated for representing collections of words, such as parts of automatic transcripts and multiple visual concepts, while different deep convolutional neural networks are evaluated for directly embedding visual information, avoiding the creation of visual concepts. Secondly, we evaluate methods for multimodal fusion and crossmodal translation, with different single-modal pairs, in the task of video hyperlinking. Bidirectional (symmetrical) deep neural networks were shown to successfully tackle downsides of multimodal autoencoders and yield a superior multimodal representation. In this work, we extensively tests them in different settings, with different single-modal representations, within the context of video-hyperlinking. Our novel bidirectional symmetrical deep neural networks are compared to classical autoencoders and are shown to yield significantly improved multimodal embeddings that significantly (alpha=0.0001) outperform multimodal embeddings obtained by deep autoencoders with an absolute improvement in precision at 10 of 14.1% when embedding visual concepts and automatic transcripts and an absolute improvement of 4.3% when embedding automatic transcripts with features obtained with very deep convolutional neural networks, yielding 80% of precision at 10.

<p>Deep neural networks have achieved tremendous success in many domains (e.g., computer vision~\cite{Alexnet12,vggnet15,fastrcnn15}, speech recognition~\cite{hinton2012deep,dahl2012context}, natural language processing~\cite{dahl2012context,collobert2011natural}, games~\cite{silver2017mastering,silver2016mastering}), however, there are still many challenges in deep learning comunity such as how to speed up training large deep neural networks, how to compress large nerual networks for mobile/embed device without performance loss, how to automatically design the optimal network structures for a certain task, and how to further design the optimal networks with improved performance and certain model size with reduced computation cost.</p> <p>To speed up training large neural networks, we propose to use multinomial sampling for dropout, i.e., sampling features or neurons according to a multinomial distribution with different probabilities for different features/neurons. To exhibit the optimal dropout probabilities, we analyze the shallow learning with multinomial dropout and establish the risk bound for stochastic optimization. By minimizing a sampling dependent factor in the risk bound, we obtain a distribution-dependent dropout with sampling probabilities dependent on the second order statistics of the data distribution. To tackle the issue of evolving distribution of neurons in deep learning, we propose an efficient adaptive dropout (named evolutional dropout) that computes the sampling probabilities on-the-fly from a mini-batch of examples.</p> <p>To compress large neural network structures, we propose a simple yet powerful method for compressing the size of deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) based on parameter binarization. The striking difference from most previous work on parameter binarization/quantization lies at different treatments of $1\times 1$ convolutions and $k\times k$ convolutions ($k>1$), where we only binarize $k\times k$ convolutions into binary patterns. By doing this, we show that previous deep CNNs such as GoogLeNet and Inception-type Nets can be compressed dramatically with marginal drop in performance. Second, in light of the different functionalities of $1\times 1$ (data projection/transformation) and $k\times k$ convolutions (pattern extraction), we propose a new block structure codenamed the pattern residual block that adds transformed feature maps generated by $1\times 1$ convolutions to the pattern feature maps generated by $k\times k$ convolutions, based on which we design a small network with $\sim 1$ million parameters. Combining with our parameter binarization, we achieve better performance on ImageNet than using similar sized networks including recently released Google MobileNets.</p> <p>To automatically design neural networks, we study how to design a genetic programming approach for optimizing the structure of a CNN for a given task under limited computational resources yet without imposing strong restrictions on the search space. To reduce the computational costs, we propose two general strategies that are observed to be helpful: (i) aggressively selecting strongest individuals for survival and reproduction, and killing weaker individuals at a very early age; (ii) increasing mutation frequency to encourage diversity and faster evolution. The combined strategy with additional optimization techniques allows us to explore a large search space but with affordable computational costs.</p> <p>To further design the optimal networks with improved performance and certain model size under reduced computation cost, we propose an ecologically inspired genetic approach for neural network structure search , that includes two types of succession: primary and secondary succession as well as accelerated extinction. Specifically, we first use primary succession to rapidly evolve a community of poor initialized neural network structures into a more diverse community, followed by a secondary succession stage for fine-grained searching based on the networks from the primary succession. Accelerated extinction is applied in both stages to reduce computational cost. In addition, we also introduce the gene duplication to further utilize the novel block of layers that appeared in the discovered network structure.</p>

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are promising models of the cortical computations supporting human object recognition. However, despite their ability to explain a significant portion of variance in neural data, the agreement between models and brain representational dynamics is far from perfect. We address this issue by asking which representational features are currently unaccounted for in neural time series data, estimated for multiple areas of the ventral stream via source-reconstructed magnetoencephalography data acquired in human participants (nine females, six males) during object viewing. We focus on the ability of visuo-semantic models, consisting of human-generated labels of object features and categories, to explain variance beyond the explanatory power of DNNs alone. We report a gradual reversal in the relative importance of DNN versus visuo-semantic features as ventral-stream object representations unfold over space and time. Although lower-level visual areas are better explained by DNN features starting early in time (at 66 ms after stimulus onset), higher-level cortical dynamics are best accounted for by visuo-semantic features starting later in time (at 146 ms after stimulus onset). Among the visuo-semantic features, object parts and basic categories drive the advantage over DNNs. These results show that a significant component of the variance unexplained by DNNs in higher-level cortical dynamics is structured and can be explained by readily nameable aspects of the objects. We conclude that current DNNs fail to fully capture dynamic representations in higher-level human visual cortex and suggest a path toward more accurate models of ventral-stream computations.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT When we view objects such as faces and cars in our visual environment, their neural representations dynamically unfold over time at a millisecond scale. These dynamics reflect the cortical computations that support fast and robust object recognition. DNNs have emerged as a promising framework for modeling these computations but cannot yet fully account for the neural dynamics. Using magnetoencephalography data acquired in human observers during object viewing, we show that readily nameable aspects of objects, such as 'eye', 'wheel', and 'face', can account for variance in the neural dynamics over and above DNNs. These findings suggest that DNNs and humans may in part rely on different object features for visual recognition and provide guidelines for model improvement.

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have been successfully applied to various real-world machine learning applications. However, performing large DNN inference tasks in real-time remains a challenge due to its substantial computational costs. Recently, Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) have emerged as an alternative way of processing DNN'fs task. Due to its eventbased, data-driven computation, SNN reduces both inference latency and complexity. With efficient conversion methods from traditional DNN, SNN exhibits similar accuracy, while leveraging many state-of-the-art network models and training methods. In this work, an efficient neuromorphic hardware architecture for image recognition task is presented. To preserve accuracy, the analog-to-spiking conversion algorithm is adopted. The system aims to minimize hardware area cost and power consumption, enabling neuromorphic hardware processing in edge devices. Simulation results have shown that, with the MNIST digit recognition task, the system has achieved $\times 20$ reduction in terms of core area cost compared to the state-of-the-art works, with an accuracy of 94.4%, core area of 15 $\mu m^{2}$ at a maximum frequency of 250 MHz.

Multi-label learning based deep transfer neural network for facial attribute classification

Survey on Deep Neural Networks in Speech and Vision Systems

We study the eigenvalue distribution of random matrices pertinent to the analysis of deep neural networks. The matrices resemble the product of the sample covariance matrices, however, an important difference is that the analog of the population covariance matrix is now a function of random data matrices (synaptic weight matrices in the deep neural network terminology). The problem has been treated in recent work [J. Pennington, S. Schoenholz and S. Ganguli, The emergence of spectral universality in deep networks, Proc. Mach. Learn. Res. 84 (2018) 1924–1932, arXiv:1802.09979] by using the techniques of free probability theory. Since, however, free probability theory deals with population covariance matrices which are independent of the data matrices, its applicability in this case has to be justified. The justification has been given in [L. Pastur, On random matrices arising in deep neural networks: Gaussian case, Pure Appl. Funct. Anal. (2020), in press, arXiv:2001.06188] for Gaussian data matrices with independent entries, a standard analytical model of free probability, by using a version of the techniques of random matrix theory. In this paper, we use another version of the techniques to extend the results of [L. Pastur, On random matrices arising in deep neural networks: Gaussian case, Pure Appl. Funct. Anal. (2020), in press, arXiv:2001.06188] to the case where the entries of the data matrices are just independent identically distributed random variables with zero mean and finite fourth moment. This, in particular, justifies the mean field approximation in the infinite width limit for the deep untrained neural networks and the property of the macroscopic universality of random matrix theory in this case.

Experimental validation of saliency maps for understanding deep neural networks for weld penetration prediction

Gait recognition is a noncontact biometric procedure that determines the identity or health status of a person by analyzing his or her walking posture and habits, including skeletal and joint movements. The most remarkable feature of this method is the possibility of conducting recognition without demanding much cooperation from participants. Therefore, this recognition technique has attracted much attention from scholars. Additionally, because of the rapid development of graphics processing unit technology, related hardware and computation performance, the applications of deep-learning technology are considerably enhanced. The objective of this study was to apply a deep neural network (DNN), which employs deep-learning technology, to achieve gait-based automatic pedestrian detection and recognition. In contrast to using wearable devices to precisely capture skeletal and joint movements, pedestrian color-image sequences were used as input in this study. Subsequently, a pretraining convolutional neural network (CNN) was employed to capture pedestrian location and extract pedestrian dense optical flow to serve as concrete low-level feature inputs. Then, a finely-tuned DNN based on the wide residual network was employed to extract high-level abstract features. In addition, to overcome the difficulty of obtaining local temporal features by using a 2D CNN, part of the 3D convolutional structure was introduced into the CNN. This design enabled use of limited memory to acquire more effective features and enhance the DNN performance. The experimental results show that the proposed method has exceptional performance for pedestrian detection and recognition.

In this study, the deep multi-layered group method of data handling (GMDH)-type neural network algorithm using revised heuristic self-organization method is proposed and applied to medical image diagnosis of liver cancer. The deep GMDH-type neural network can automatically organize the deep neural network architecture which has many hidden layers. The structural parameters such as the number of hidden layers, the number of neurons in hidden layers and useful input variables are automatically selected to minimize prediction error criterion defined as Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) or prediction sum of squares (PSS). The architecture of the deep neural network is automatically organized using the revised heuristic self-organization method which is a type of the evolutionary computation. This new neural network algorithm is applied to the medical image diagnosis of the liver cancer and the recognition results are compared with the conventional 3-layered sigmoid function neural network.

This paper proposes a data augmentation strategy for improving on-road object detection based on a deep neural network. The method uses a single camera and detects objects based on an optimized deep neural network for a driving environment. The strategy also uses a single-shot multi-box detector (SSD) for object detection, which is a state-of-the-art deep-learning algorithm. The performance is improved by using data augmentation for an advanced driver assist system (ADAS) specific to on-road object recognition. The problem of object detection is first analyzed based on a deep neural network in the ADAS domain, and then representative object detection methods that use deep neural networks are surveyed. A restricted random crop process is suggested for detecting small objects in an image, and then a patch resampling strategy is proposed for solving the long tail property in an on-road dataset. The proposed ADAS domain-specific data augmentation method is adjusted for the original object detection method based on a deep neural network. The object detection results were evaluated using an embedded board on the KITTI benchmark dataset, and the suggested data augmentation method improves the average precision by 30%.

Land cover and its dynamic information is the basis for characterizing surface conditions, supporting land resource management and optimization, and assessing the impacts of climate change and human activities. In land cover information extraction, the traditional convolutional neural network (CNN) method has several problems, such as the inability to be applied to multispectral and hyperspectral satellite imagery, the weak generalization ability of the model and the difficulty of automating the construction of a training database. To solve these problems, this study proposes a new type of deep convolutional neural network based on Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery. The network integrates cascaded cross-channel parametric pooling and average pooling layer, applies a hierarchical sampling strategy to realize the automatic construction of the training dataset, determines the technical scheme of model-related parameters, and finally performs the automatic classification of remote sensing images. This study used the new type of deep convolutional neural network to extract land cover information from Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, and compared the experimental results with those obtained by traditional methods. The results show that: (1) The proposed deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) model can automatically construct the training dataset and classify images. This model performs the classification of multispectral and hyperspectral satellite images using deep neural networks, which improves the generalization ability of the model and simplifies the application of the model. (2) The proposed DCNN model provides the best classification results in the Qinhuangdao area. The overall accuracy of the land cover data obtained is 82.0%, and the kappa coefficient is 0.76. The overall accuracy is improved by 5% and 14% compared to the support vector machine method and the maximum likelihood classification method, respectively.

Deep neural networks have been shown to outperform conventionalstate-of-the-art approaches in several structured predictionapplications. While high-performance computing devices such asGPUs has made developing very powerful deep neural networkspossible, it is not feasible to run these networks on low-cost, lowpowercomputing devices such as embedded CPUs or even embeddedGPUs. As such, there has been a lot of recent interestto produce efficient deep neural network architectures that can berun on small computing devices. Motivated by this, the idea ofStochasticNets was introduced, where deep neural networks areformed by leveraging random graph theory. It has been shownthat StochasticNet can form new networks with 2X or 3X architecturalefficiency while maintaining modeling accuracy. Motivated bythese promising results, here we investigate the idea of Stochastic-Net in StochasticNet (SiS), where highly-efficient deep neural networkswith Network in Network (NiN) architectures are formed ina stochastic manner. Such networks have an intertwining structurecomposed of convolutional layers and micro neural networksto boost the modeling accuracy. The experimental results showthat SiS can form deep neural networks with NiN architectures thathave 4X greater architectural efficiency with only a 2% dropin accuracy for the CIFAR10 dataset. The results are even morepromising for the SVHN dataset, where SiS formed deep neuralnetworks with NiN architectures that have 11.5X greater architecturalefficiency with only a 1% decrease in modeling accuracy.

Self-mixing interferometry (SMI) is superior to other laser interferometry methods due to its simplicity and compactness. However, SMI signals are often complex and difficult to process due to interference in the form of variations in the effective reflectivity of the target, noisy signals, complex signal shapes, and other dependencies. Deep neural networks have been a very popular area of research in computer artificial intelligence in recent years, allowing more implicit features to be uncovered than traditional shallow machine learning. It has been shown that convolutional and back-propagation neural networks can be used for SMI signal processing. There are also studies that have used machine learning genetic algorithms for absolute distance measurement. Based on the above, this study used convolutional neural networks to form a deep neural network for absolute distance measurement based on SMI technology. We first trained the deep convolutional neural network at different feedback strengths. The results of the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model showed a coefficient of determination of 0.9987. which is consistent with the required model. The trained network was then used to estimate absolute distances with and without the addition of noise. The comparison proves that the proposed method is noise-proof and has high adaptability for measurements under different conditions.