Data augmentation (DA) is an essential technique for training state-of-the-art deep learning systems. In this paper, we empirically show data augmentation might introduce noisy augmented examples and consequently hurt the performance on unaugmented data during inference. To alleviate this issue, we propose a simple yet highly effective approach, dubbed \emph{KeepAugment}, to increase augmented images fidelity. The idea is first to use the saliency map to detect important regions on the original images and then preserve these informative regions during augmentation. This information-preserving strategy allows us to generate more faithful training examples. Empirically, we demonstrate our method significantly improves on a number of prior art data augmentation schemes, e.g. AutoAugment, Cutout, random erasing, achieving promising results on image classification, semi-supervised image classification, multi-view multi-camera tracking and object detection.
Shape deformation of targets in SAR image due to random orientation and partial information loss caused by occlusion of the radar signal, is an essential challenge in SAR ship detection. In this paper, we propose a data augmentation method to train a deep network that is robust to partial information loss within the targets. Taking advantage of ground-truth annotations for bounding box and instance segmentation mask, we present a simple and effective pipeline to simulate information loss on targets in instance-level, while preserving contextual information. Furthermore, we adopt deformable con…
In this paper, we propose a novel data augmentation technique (ANDA) applied to the Salient Object Detection (SOD) context. Standard data augmentation techniques proposed in the literature, such as image cropping, rotation, flipping, and resizing, only generate variations of the existing examples, providing a limited generalization. Our method has the novelty of creating new images, by combining an object with a new background while retaining part of its salience in this new context; To do so, the ANDA technique relies on the linear combination between labeled salient objects and new backgroun…
A Text-Image Fusion Method with Data Augmentation Capabilities for Referring Medical Image Segmentation
College of Information Science and Engineering（信息科学与工程学院）；Ritsumeikan University（立命馆大学）；Tiwaki Co., Ltd.（Tiwaki公司）；Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学）；School of Software（软件学院）；Zhejiang University（浙江大学）
In this paper, we present an Improved Data Augmentation (IDA) technique focused on Salient Object Detection (SOD). Standard data augmentation techniques proposed in the literature, such as image cropping, rotation, flipping, and resizing, only generate variations of the existing examples, providing a limited generalization. Our method combines image inpainting, affine transformations, and the linear combination of different generated background images with salient objects extracted from labeled data. Our proposed technique enables more precise control of the object's position and size while pr…
Image text retrieval is a task to search for the proper textual descriptions of the visual world and vice versa. One challenge of this task is the vulnerability to input image and text corruptions. Such corruptions are often unobserved during the training, and degrade the retrieval model decision quality substantially. In this paper, we propose a novel image text retrieval technique, referred to as robust visual semantic embedding (RVSE), which consists of novel image-based and text-based augmentation techniques called semantic preserving augmentation for image (SPAugI) and text (SPAugT). Sinc…
IPF-RDA: An Information-Preserving Framework for Robust Data Augmentation
State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University（新型软件技术国家重点实验室，计算机科学与技术系，南京大学）；State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University（新型软件技术国家重点实验室，南京大学）；School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University（人工智能学院，南京大学）；School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University（电子科学与工程学院，南京大学）
Mitigating Illumination-Induced Domain Shift in Night-Time Pedestrian Detection for Intelligent Vehicles using Annotation-Preserving Diffusion Augmentation
Megvii Technology（旷视科技）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；University of Central Florida（中佛罗里达大学）
In this paper, we present new data pre-processing and augmentation techniques for DNN-based raw image denoising. Compared with traditional RGB image denoising, performing this task on direct camera sensor readings presents new challenges such as how to effectively handle various Bayer patterns from different data sources, and subsequently how to perform valid data augmentation with raw images. To address the first problem, we propose a Bayer pattern unification (BayerUnify) method to unify different Bayer patterns. This allows us to fully utilize a heterogeneous dataset to train a single denoi…
We introduce style augmentation, a new form of data augmentation based on random style transfer, for improving the robustness of convolutional neural networks (CNN) over both classification and regression based tasks. During training, our style augmentation randomizes texture, contrast and color, while preserving shape and semantic content. This is accomplished by adapting an arbitrary style transfer network to perform style randomization, by sampling input style embeddings from a multivariate normal distribution instead of inferring them from a style image. In addition to standard classificat…
SGD-Mix: Enhancing Domain-Specific Image Classification with Label-Preserving Data Augmentation
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Cheng Kung University（计算机科学与信息工程系，国立成功大学）；Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University（生物医学信息学系，哈佛医学院，哈佛大学）
Technical University Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；Helmholtz AI（亥姆霍兹人工智能研究所）；Munich School of Data Science (MuDS)（慕尼黑数据科学学院）；ContextVision AB（ContextVision公司）；Institute for Computational Biology, HelmholtzZentrum Munich（慕尼黑亥姆霍兹中心计算生物学研究所）
In digital pathology, different staining procedures and scanners cause substantial color variations in whole-slide images (WSIs), especially across different laboratories. These color shifts result in a poor generalization of deep learning-based methods from the training domain to external pathology data. To increase test performance, stain normalization techniques are used to reduce the variance between training and test domain. Alternatively, color augmentation can be applied during training leading to a more robust model without the extra step of color normalization at test time. We propose…
Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）；IBM Research AI（IBM人工智能研究院）
Data augmentation is one of the most important tools in training modern deep neural networks. Recently, great advances have been made in searching for optimal augmentation policies in the image classification domain. However, two key points related to data augmentation remain uncovered by the current methods. First is that most if not all modern augmentation search methods are offline and learning policies are isolated from their usage. The learned policies are mostly constant throughout the training process and are not adapted to the current training model state. Second, the policies rely on …
In order to reduce overfitting, neural networks are typically trained with data augmentation, the practice of artificially generating additional training data via label-preserving transformations of existing training examples. While these types of transformations make intuitive sense, recent work has demonstrated that even non-label-preserving data augmentation can be surprisingly effective, examining this type of data augmentation through linear combinations of pairs of examples. Despite their effectiveness, little is known about why such methods work. In this work, we aim to explore a new, m…
The Efficacy of Semantics-Preserving Transformations in Self-Supervised Learning for Medical Ultrasound
Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学计算机科学学院）；Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学系统设计工程系）；Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University（西部大学施乐希医学与牙科学校）
University of Osnabrück（奥斯纳布吕克大学）；MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学MRC认知与脑科学组）
Deep convolutional neural networks trained for image object categorization have shown remarkable similarities with representations found across the primate ventral visual stream. Yet, artificial and biological networks still exhibit important differences. Here we investigate one such property: increasing invariance to identity-preserving image transformations found along the ventral stream. Despite theoretical evidence that invariance should emerge naturally from the optimization process, we present empirical evidence that the activations of convolutional neural networks trained for object cat…
Whilst face recognition applications are becoming increasingly prevalent within our daily lives, leading approaches in the field still suffer from performance bias to the detriment of some racial profiles within society. In this study, we propose a novel adversarial derived data augmentation methodology that aims to enable dataset balance at a per-subject level via the use of image-to-image transformation for the transfer of sensitive racial characteristic facial features. Our aim is to automatically construct a synthesised dataset by transforming facial images across varying racial domains, w…
Kyushu University（九州大学）；Tianjin University of Technology（天津理工大学）；Alibaba Group（阿里巴巴集团）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；University of Alberta（阿尔伯塔大学）；Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii)（阿尔伯塔机器智能研究所（Amii））
Online updating of the object model via samples from historical frames is of great importance for accurate visual object tracking. Recent works mainly focus on constructing effective and efficient updating methods while neglecting the training samples for learning discriminative object models, which is also a key part of a learning problem. In this paper, we propose the DeepMix that takes historical samples' embeddings as input and generates augmented embeddings online, enhancing the state-of-the-art online learning methods for visual object tracking. More specifically, we first propose the on…
Fondazione Bruno Kessler（布鲁诺·凯塞勒基金会）；University of Udine（乌迪内大学）；Free University of Bozen-Bolzano（博尔扎诺自由大学）
Every hour, huge amounts of visual contents are posted on social media and user-generated content platforms. To find relevant videos by means of a natural language query, text-video retrieval methods have received increased attention over the past few years. Data augmentation techniques were introduced to increase the performance on unseen test examples by creating new training samples with the application of semantics-preserving techniques, such as color space or geometric transformations on images. Yet, these techniques are usually applied on raw data, leading to more resource-demanding solu…
University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；Microsoft（微软）；University of Salzburg（萨尔茨堡大学）
The problem of data augmentation in feature space is considered. A new architecture, denoted the FeATure TransfEr Network (FATTEN), is proposed for the modeling of feature trajectories induced by variations of object pose. This architecture exploits a parametrization of the pose manifold in terms of pose and appearance. This leads to a deep encoder/decoder network architecture, where the encoder factors into an appearance and a pose predictor. Unlike previous attempts at trajectory transfer, FATTEN can be efficiently trained end-to-end, with no need to train separate feature transfer functions…
ReMA: A Training-Free Plug-and-Play Mixing Augmentation for Video Behavior Recognition
University of Science and Technology of China（科学技术大学）；Hefei University of Technology（合肥工业大学）；Hefei Xiaosheng Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.（合肥小生智能科技有限公司）；Cylingo Group（Cylingo集团）；The University of Electro-Communications（电通大学）
Fu Jen Catholic University（辅仁大学）；National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
The performance of a convolutional neural network (CNN) based face recognition model largely relies on the richness of labelled training data. Collecting a training set with large variations of a face identity under different poses and illumination changes, however, is very expensive, making the diversity of within-class face images a critical issue in practice. In this paper, we propose a 3D model-assisted domain-transferred face augmentation network (DotFAN) that can generate a series of variants of an input face based on the knowledge distilled from existing rich face datasets collected fro…
Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust（盖伊和圣托马斯国民保健服务基金会信托）；King’s College London（伦敦国王学院）；University of Warwick（华威大学）
Patient-specific 3D printing of congenital heart anatomy demands an accurate segmentation of the thin tissue interfaces which characterise these diagnoses. Even when a label set has a high spatial overlap with the ground truth, inaccurate delineation of these interfaces can result in topological errors. These compromise the clinical utility of such models due to the anomalous appearance of defects. CNNs have achieved state-of-the-art performance in segmentation tasks. Whilst data augmentation has often played an important role, we show that conventional image resampling schemes used therein ca…
Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics, and Documentation（医学信息学、统计学与文献研究所）；Medical University of Graz（格拉茨医科大学）
The generation of artificial data based on existing observations, known as data augmentation, is a technique used in machine learning to improve model accuracy, generalisation, and to control overfitting. Augmentor is a software package, available in both Python and Julia versions, that provides a high level API for the expansion of image data using a stochastic, pipeline-based approach which effectively allows for images to be sampled from a distribution of augmented images at runtime. Augmentor provides methods for most standard augmentation practices as well as several advanced features suc…
We investigate the robustness of vision transformers (ViTs) through the lens of their special patch-based architectural structure, i.e., they process an image as a sequence of image patches. We find that ViTs are surprisingly insensitive to patch-based transformations, even when the transformation largely destroys the original semantics and makes the image unrecognizable by humans. This indicates that ViTs heavily use features that survived such transformations but are generally not indicative of the semantic class to humans. Further investigations show that these features are useful but non-r…
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology（以色列理工学院）；Toyoyta Technological Institute at Chicago（丰田工业大学芝加哥分校）
Machine learning plays an increasingly significant role in many aspects of our lives (including medicine, transportation, security, justice and other domains), making the potential consequences of false predictions increasingly devastating. These consequences may be mitigated if we can automatically flag such false predictions and potentially assign them to alternative, more reliable mechanisms, that are possibly more costly and involve human attention. This suggests the task of detecting errors, which we tackle in this paper for the case of visual classification. To this end, we propose a nov…
Suboptimal generalization of machine learning models on unseen data is a key challenge which hampers the clinical applicability of such models to medical imaging. Although various methods such as domain adaptation and domain generalization have evolved to combat this challenge, learning robust and generalizable representations is core to medical image understanding, and continues to be a problem. Here, we propose STRAP (Style TRansfer Augmentation for histoPathology), a form of data augmentation based on random style transfer from non-medical style source such as artistic paintings, for learni…
University of Science Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；University of Maryland College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；JD Explore Academy（京东探索研究院）；The University of Sydney（悉尼大学）
Data augmentation is a critical contributing factor to the success of deep learning but heavily relies on prior domain knowledge which is not always available. Recent works on automatic data augmentation learn a policy to form a sequence of augmentation operations, which are still pre-defined and restricted to limited options. In this paper, we show that a prior-free autonomous data augmentation's objective can be derived from a representation learning principle that aims to preserve the minimum sufficient information of the labels. Given an example, the objective aims at creating a distant "h…
Technical University of Denmark（丹麦技术大学）；icometrix（icometrix公司）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；University of Antwerp（安特卫普大学）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）
Most publicly available brain MRI datasets are very homogeneous in terms of scanner and protocols, and it is difficult for models that learn from such data to generalize to multi-center and multi-scanner data. We propose a novel data augmentation approach with the aim of approximating the variability in terms of intensities and contrasts present in real world clinical data. We use a Gaussian Mixture Model based approach to change tissue intensities individually, producing new contrasts while preserving anatomical information. We train a deep learning model on a single scanner dataset and evalu…
