Reaction-diffusion model applied to enhancing U-Net accuracy for semantic image segmentation

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In our current paper we are introducing a new method to enhance semantic image segmentation accuracy of a U-Net neural network model by integrating it with a mathematical model based on reaction-diffusion equations.</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>The methods currently used for semantic image segmentation, including U-Net neural networks, are processing images as blocks of pixels in which the boundaries, the colors and patterns are all mixed together as inputs to the transformations that take place inside the layers of the convolutional neural networks. In our method we are modifying the architecture of a U-Net network and introduce a new data input feed in parallel to the image feed that needs to be segmented. The new input feed is mathematically extracted from the input image and contains the edges (shape) information of the image to be processed. The new input feed it's used during the U-Net decoding phase in order to help shape more precisely the up-scaled output edges, thus leading to improved accuracy performance of the network.</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>Introducing the parallel feed shows an improvement of accuracy metrics up to 4% (if compared to the U-Net model) and has a limited impact on computational resources consumed at training, because we are only adding a small number of new parameters to be calculated.</p>