TextureMask: A merged architecture for low-resolution instance segmentation

Abstract

Instance segmentation has a wide range of applications, including video surveillance, autonomous driving, and behavior analysis. Nevertheless, as a type of pixel-level segmentation, its prediction performance in practice is substantially affected by low-resolution (LR) images resulting from the limitations of image acquisition equipment and poor acquisition conditions. Moreover, because their immense computational costs prevent the implementation of existing segmentation models on embedded devices, the development of a lightweight segmentation model has become an urgent necessity. However, it is challenging to achieve sound results with high efficiency and portability. From another perspective, to improve understanding of detailed objects, an architecture is needed that promotes an advanced interpretation of the segmentation, that is, a refined mask with texture. Our main contribution, called TextureMask, consists of the MobileNet-FPN for Mask R-CNN methods, segmentation with cropping, and a gradient sensitivity map, which are then merged into a unified map to refine and enrich the mask with texture information. Furthermore, preprocessing and post-processing algorithms are incorporated. Experiments demonstrated that our technique exhibits good pixel-level segmentation performance in terms of both accuracy and computational efficiency for a given LR input, and it can be easily implemented in embedded platforms.