LF-ViT: Reducing Spatial Redundancy in Vision Transformer for Efficient Image Recognition
This work addresses computational inefficiency in ViTs for image recognition tasks, offering a domain-specific improvement.
The paper tackles the problem of spatial redundancy in Vision Transformers (ViT) for efficient image recognition by introducing LF-ViT, which reduces FLOPs by 63% and doubles throughput compared to Deit-S while maintaining performance.
The Vision Transformer (ViT) excels in accuracy when handling high-resolution images, yet it confronts the challenge of significant spatial redundancy, leading to increased computational and memory requirements. To address this, we present the Localization and Focus Vision Transformer (LF-ViT). This model operates by strategically curtailing computational demands without impinging on performance. In the Localization phase, a reduced-resolution image is processed; if a definitive prediction remains elusive, our pioneering Neighborhood Global Class Attention (NGCA) mechanism is triggered, effectively identifying and spotlighting class-discriminative regions based on initial findings. Subsequently, in the Focus phase, this designated region is used from the original image to enhance recognition. Uniquely, LF-ViT employs consistent parameters across both phases, ensuring seamless end-to-end optimization. Our empirical tests affirm LF-ViT's prowess: it remarkably decreases Deit-S's FLOPs by 63\% and concurrently amplifies throughput twofold. Code of this project is at https://github.com/edgeai1/LF-ViT.git.