Deep topology network: A framework based on feedback adjustment learning rate for image classification

Abstract

Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has demonstrated its superior ability to achieve amazing accuracy in computer vision field. However, due to the limitation of network depth and computational complexity, it is still difficult to obtain the best classification results for the specific image classification tasks. In order to improve classification performance without increasing network depth, a new Deep Topology Network (DTN) framework is proposed. The key idea of DTN is based on the iteration of multiple learning rate feedback. The framework consists of multiple sub-networks and each sub-network has its own learning rate. After the determined iteration period, these learning rates can be adjusted according to the feedback of training accuracy, in the feature learning process, the optimal learning rate is updated iteratively to optimize the loss function. In practice, the proposed DTN framework is applied to several state-of-the-art deep networks, and its performance is tested by extensive experiments and comprehensive evaluations of CIFAR-10 and MNIST benchmarks. Experimental results show that most deep networks can benefit from the DTN framework with an accuracy of 99.5% on MINIST dataset, which is 5.9% higher than that on the CIFAR-10 benchmark.