Scale-covariant and scale-invariant Gaussian derivative networks
This work addresses the problem of scale generalization in image classification for researchers working on robust computer vision systems.
This paper introduces a deep learning architecture that combines scale-space theory with deep learning to achieve scale covariance and scale invariance. The network demonstrates good performance on the MNISTLargeScale dataset, classifying patterns at scales not present in the training data.
This paper presents a hybrid approach between scale-space theory and deep learning, where a deep learning architecture is constructed by coupling parameterized scale-space operations in cascade. By sharing the learnt parameters between multiple scale channels, and by using the transformation properties of the scale-space primitives under scaling transformations, the resulting network becomes provably scale covariant. By in addition performing max pooling over the multiple scale channels, a resulting network architecture for image classification also becomes provably scale invariant. We investigate the performance of such networks on the MNISTLargeScale dataset, which contains rescaled images from original MNIST over a factor of 4 concerning training data and over a factor of 16 concerning testing data. It is demonstrated that the resulting approach allows for scale generalization, enabling good performance for classifying patterns at scales not present in the training data.