Input Feature Map Research Articles

Fall detection method based on spatio-temporal coordinate attention for high-resolution networks

Fall behavior is closely related to the high mortality rate of the elderly, so fall detection has become an important and urgent research area in human behavior recognition. However, the existing fall detection methods, suffer from the loss of detailed action information during feature extraction due to the downsampling operation, resulting in subpar performance when detecting falls with similar behaviors such as lying and sitting. To solve the challenges, this study proposes a high-resolution spatio-temporal feature extraction method based on a spatio-temporal coordinate attention mechanism. The method employs 3D convolutions to extract spatio-temporal features and utilizes gradual down-sampling to generate a multi-resolution sub-network, thus realizing multi-scale fusion and perception enhancement of details. In particular, this study designs a pseudo-3D basic block, which simulates the ability of 3D convolution, to ensure the running speed of the network while controlling the number of parameters. Further, a spatio-temporal coordinate attention mechanism is designed to accurately extract the spatio-temporal positional changes of key skeletal points and the interrelationships among them. Long-term dependencies in horizontal, vertical, temporal directions are captured through three one-dimensional global pooling operations. Then the long-range relationships and channel correlations among features are captured by cascading and slicing operations. Finally, the key information is effectively highlighted by performing dot-multiplication operations between the feature maps from the horizontal, vertical and temporal directions and the input feature maps. Experimental results on three typical public datasets show that the proposed method can better extract motion features and improve the accuracy of fall detection.

TCDDU-Net: combining transformer and convolutional dual-path decoding U-Net for retinal vessel segmentation

Accurate segmentation of retinal blood vessels is crucial for enhancing diagnostic efficiency and preventing disease progression. However, the small size and complex structure of retinal blood vessels, coupled with low contrast in corresponding fundus images, pose significant challenges for this task. We propose a novel approach for retinal vessel segmentation, which combines the transformer and convolutional dual-path decoding U-Net (TCDDU-Net). We propose the selective dense connection swin transformer block, which converts the input feature map into patches, introduces MLPs to generate probabilities, and performs selective fusion at different stages. This structure forms a dense connection framework, enabling the capture of long-distance dependencies and effective fusion of features across different stages. The subsequent stage involves the design of the background decoder, which utilizes deformable convolution to learn the background information of retinal vessels by treating them as segmentation objects. This is then combined with the foreground decoder to form a dual-path decoding U-Net. Finally, the foreground segmentation results and the processed background segmentation results are fused to obtain the final retinal vessel segmentation map. To evaluate the effectiveness of our method, we performed experiments on the DRIVE, STARE, and CHASE datasets for retinal vessel segmentation. Experimental results show that the segmentation accuracies of our algorithms are 96.98, 97.40, and 97.23, and the AUC metrics are 98.68, 98.56, and 98.50, respectively.In addition, we evaluated our methods using F1 score, specificity, and sensitivity metrics. Through a comparative analysis, we found that our proposed TCDDU-Net method effectively improves retinal vessel segmentation performance and achieves impressive results on multiple datasets compared to existing methods.

Improved YOLOv8n for Lightweight Ship Detection

Automatic ship detection is a crucial task within the domain of maritime transportation management. With the progressive success of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a number of advanced CNN models have been presented in order to detect ships. Although these detection models have achieved marked performance, several undesired results may occur under complex maritime conditions, such as missed detections, false positives, and low detection accuracy. Moreover, the existing detection models endure large number of parameters and heavy computation cost. To deal with these problems, we suggest a lightweight ship model of detection called DSSM–LightNet based upon the improved YOLOv8n. First, we introduce a lightweight Dual Convolutional (DualConv) into the model to lower both the number of parameters and the computational complexity. The principle is that DualConv combines two types of convolution kernels, 3x3 and 1x1, and utilizes group convolution techniques to effectively reduce computational costs while processing the same input feature map channels. Second, we propose a Slim-neck structure in the neck network, which introduces GSConv and VoVGSCSP modules to construct an efficient feature-fusion layer. This fusion strategy helps the model better capture the features of targets of different sizes. Meanwhile, a spatially enhanced attention module (SEAM) is leveraged to integrate with a Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) and the Slim-neck to achieve simple yet effective feature extraction, minimizing information loss during feature fusion. CIoU may not accurately reflect the relative positional relationship between bounding boxes in some complex scenarios. In contrast, MPDIoU can provide more accurate positional information in bounding-box regression by directly minimizing point distance and considering comprehensive loss. Therefore, we utilize the minimum point distance IoU (MPDIoU) rather than the Complete Intersection over Union (CIoU) Loss to further enhance the detection precision of the suggested model. Comprehensive tests carried out on the publicly accessible SeaShips dataset have demonstrated that our model greatly exceeds other algorithms in relation to their detection accuracy and efficiency, while reserving its lightweight nature.

ECMTrans-net: Multi-Class Segmentation Network Based on Tumor Tissue in Endometrial Cancer Pathology Images

Endometrial cancer has the second highest incidence of malignant tumors in the female reproductive system, and accurate and efficient endometrial cancer pathology image analysis is one of the important research components of computer-aided diagnosis. However, endometrial cancer pathologic images have the challenges of smaller solid tumors, lesion areas varying in morphology, and difficulty distinguishing solid and non-solid tumors, which would impact the accuracy of subsequent pathological analyses. Therefore, an Endometrial Cancer Multi-class Transformer Network (ECMTrans-net) is proposed to improve the segmentation accuracy of endometrial cancer pathology images. On the one hand, an ECM-Attention is proposed, which can sequentially infer attention maps along three separate dimensions: channel, local spatial, and global spatial, and multiply the attention maps and the input feature map for adaptive feature refinement, solving the problems of the small size of solid tumors and similar characteristics of solid tumors to non-solid tumors and further improving the accuracy of segmentation of solid tumors. On the other hand, an ECM-Transformer is proposed, which can fuse multi-class feature information and dynamically adjust the receptive field, solving the issue of complex tumor features. Experiments on the solid tumor endometrial cancer pathological (ST-ECP) dataset show that the ECMTrans-net performs superior to state-of-the-art image segmentation methods, and the average values of Accuracy, MIoU, Precision, and Dice were 0.952, 0.927, 0.931 and 0.901, respectively.

G-YOLO: A Lightweight Infrared Aerial Remote Sensing Target Detection Model for UAVs Based on YOLOv8

A lightweight infrared target detection model, G-YOLO, based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is proposed to address the issues of low accuracy in target detection of UAV aerial images in complex ground scenarios and large network models that are difficult to apply to mobile or embedded platforms. Firstly, the YOLOv8 backbone feature extraction network is improved and designed based on the lightweight network, GhostBottleneckV2, and the remaining part of the backbone network adopts the depth-separable convolution, DWConv, to replace part of the standard convolution, which effectively retains the detection effect of the model while greatly reducing the number of model parameters and calculations. Secondly, the neck structure is improved by the ODConv module, which adopts an adaptive convolutional structure to adaptively adjust the convolutional kernel size and step size, which allows for more effective feature extraction and detection based on targets at different scales. At the same time, the neck structure is further optimized using the attention mechanism, SEAttention, to improve the model’s ability to learn global information of input feature maps, which is then applied to each channel of each feature map to enhance the useful information in a specific channel and improve the model’s detection performance. Finally, the introduction of the SlideLoss loss function enables the model to calculate the differences between predicted and actual truth bounding boxes during the training process, and adjust the model parameters based on these differences to improve the accuracy and efficiency of object detection. The experimental results show that compared with YOLOv8n, the G-YOLO reduces the missed and false detection rates of infrared small target detection in complex backgrounds. The number of model parameters is reduced by 74.2%, the number of computational floats is reduced by 54.3%, the FPS is improved by 71, which improves the detection efficiency of the model, and the average accuracy (mAP) reaches 91.4%, which verifies the validity of the model for UAV-based infrared small target detection. Furthermore, the FPS of the model reaches 556, and it will be suitable for wider and more complex detection task such as small targets, long-distance targets, and other complex scenes.

Deep encoder-decoder networks for belt longitudinal tear detection

The belt conveyor is susceptible to longitudinal tearing, which poses a serious threat to the safety of coal mines. Traditional methods for detecting longitudinal tears have limitations such as poor image quality, limited applicability, and high hardware costs. An improved encoder-decoder network was proposed to solve the longitudinal tear detection problem. This method utilizes a line structured light system for image acquisition. The input images are downscaled using a sorting algorithm to extract the information of pixels with high grayscale values as the input feature map for the neural network. The reduced-dimensional encoder-decoder network then semantically segments the input feature map, and the resulting pixel segmentation is mapped to the location of the longitudinal tear. Finally, the position and length of the tear are calculated by back-projecting the semantic segmentation result to the world coordinate system. Experimental results demonstrate that this method effectively reduces hardware resource consumption and improves detection speed. The DICE and MIOU scores for the improved network are 97.69% and 95.47%, respectively, while the recall and precision for improved detection are 96.60% and 95.67%, respectively. Therefore, this method can successfully monitor longitudinal tear failures and ensure the safety of transportation.

Reconstructing hyperspectral images of textiles from a single RGB image utilizing the multihead self-attention mechanism

Hyperspectral images possess abundant information and play a pivotal role in enhancing the accuracy of color difference detection in textiles. However, traditional hyperspectral imaging methods necessitate costly equipment and intricate operational procedures. A novel deep learning model based on a multihead attention mechanism was proposed in this article to facilitate the extensive application of hyperspectral imaging technology in textile quality inspection. This model enabled the reconstruction of the hyperspectral information of plain weave textiles from a single RGB image. In this model, encoder-decoder architecture and pyramid pooling convolutional operations were employed to integrate multiscale features of plain weave cotton-linen textiles. This could capture details and contextual information in textile images more precisely, enhancing the accuracy of hyperspectral image reconstruction. Simultaneously, an attention mechanism was introduced to increase the model’s receptive field and improve its focus on key regions in the input image and feature maps. This resulted in a reduced weighting of redundant information during network learning, leading to an improved feature extraction capability of the network. Through these methods, successful reconstructions of plain weave textiles hyperspectral information from a single RGB image was achieved. Quantitative and qualitative tests were conducted on two datasets, namely, the NTIRE 2020 dataset and a self-made textile dataset, to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The approach proposed in this article exhibited promising results on both datasets. Specifically, the reconstructed textile hyperspectral images achieved a root mean square error of 0.0344, a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 29.945, a spectral angle mapper of 3.753, and a structural similarity index measure of 0.955 on the textile dataset. In the reconstructed hyperspectral colorimetric experiment, the maximum value of average color difference was 2.641. These results demonstrate that the method can meet the requirements for textile color measurement applications.

Improved Detection of Multi-Class Bad Traffic Signs Using Ensemble and Test Time Augmentation Based on Yolov5 Models

Various factors such as natural disasters, vandalism, weather, and environmental conditions can affect the physical state of traffic signs. The proposed model aims to improve detection of traffic signs affected by partial occlusion as a result of overgrown vegetation, displaced signs (those knocked down, bent), perforated signs (those damaged with holes), faded signs (color degradation), rusted signs (corroded surface), and de-faced signs (placing graffiti, etc., by vandals). This research aims to improve the detection of bad traffic signs using three approaches. In the first approach, Spiral Pooling Pyramid-Fast (SPPF) and C3TR modules are introduced to the architecture of Yolov5 models. SPPF helps provide a multi-scale representation of the input feature map by pooling at different scales, which is useful in improving the quality of feature maps and detecting bad traffic signs of various sizes and perspectives. The C3TR module uses convolutional layers to enhance local feature extraction and transformers to boost understanding of the global context. Secondly, we use predictions of Yolov5 as base models to implement a mean ensemble to improve performance. Thirdly, test time augmentation (TTA) is applied at test time by using scaling and flipping to improve accuracy. Some signs are generated using stable diffusion techniques to augment certain classes. We test the proposed models on the CCTSDB2021, TT100K, GTSDB, and GTSRD datasets to ensure generalization and use k-fold cross-validation to further evaluate the performance of the models. The proposed models outperform other state-of-the-art models in comparison.

Spatial attention U-Net model with Harris hawks optimization for retinal blood vessel and optic disc segmentation in fundus images.

The state of the human eye's blood vessels is a crucial aspect in the diagnosis of ophthalmological illnesses. For many computer-aided diagnostic systems, precise retinal vessel segmentation is an essential job. However, it remains a difficult task due to the intricate vascular system of the eye. Although many different vascular segmentation techniques have already been presented, additional study is still required to address the problem of inadequate segmentation of thin and tiny vessels. In this work, we introduce the Spatial Attention U-Net (SAU-Net) modelwith harris hawks' optimization (HHO), a lightweight network that can be applied as a data augmentation technique to improve the efficiency of the existingannotated samples without the need of thousands of training instances for Retinal Blood Vessel and Optic Disc Segmentation. The SAU-Net-HHO implementation uses a spatially inferred attention map multiplied by the input feature map for adaptive feature enhancement. U-Net convolutional blocks have been replaced with structured dropout blocks in the proposed network to prevent overfitting. Data from both vascular extraction (DRIVE) and structured analysis of the retina (STARE) are used to evaluate SAU-Net-HHO performance. The results show that the proposed SAU-Net-HHO performs well on both datasets. Analysing the obtained results, an average of 98.5% accuracy and Specificity 96.7% was achieved for DRIVE dataset and 97.8% accuracy and specificity 94.5% for STARE dataset. The proposed method yields numerical results with average values that are on par with those of state-of-the-art methods. Visual inspection has revealed that the suggested method can segment thin and tiny vessels with greater accuracy than previous methods. It also demonstrates its potential for real-life clinical application.

Improving the performance of deep learning models in predicting and classifying gamma passing rates with discriminative features and a class balancing technique: a retrospective cohort study

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to improve the deep learning (DL) model performance in predicting and classifying IMRT gamma passing rate (GPR) by using input features related to machine parameters and a class balancing technique.MethodsA total of 2348 fields from 204 IMRT plans for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma were retrospectively collected to form a dataset. Input feature maps, including fluence, leaf gap, leaf speed of both banks, and corresponding errors, were constructed from the dynamic log files. The SHAP framework was employed to compute the impact of each feature on the model output for recursive feature elimination. A series of UNet++ based models were trained on the obtained eight feature sets with three fine-tuning methods including the standard mean squared error (MSE) loss, a re-sampling technique, and a proposed weighted MSE loss (WMSE). Differences in mean absolute error, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity were compared between the different models.ResultsThe models trained with feature sets including leaf speed and leaf gap features predicted GPR for failed fields more accurately than the other models (F(7, 147) = 5.378, p < 0.001). The WMSE loss had the highest accuracy in predicting GPR for failed fields among the three fine-tuning methods (F(2, 42) = 14.149, p < 0.001), while an opposite trend was observed in predicting GPR for passed fields (F(2, 730) = 9.907, p < 0.001). The WMSE_FS5 model achieved a superior AUC (0.92) and more balanced sensitivity (0.77) and specificity (0.89) compared to the other models.ConclusionsMachine parameters can provide discriminative input features for GPR prediction in DL. The novel weighted loss function demonstrates the ability to balance the prediction and classification accuracy between the passed and failed fields. The proposed approach is able to improve the DL model performance in predicting and classifying GPR, and can potentially be integrated into the plan optimization process to generate higher deliverability plans.Trial registration: This clinical trial was registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry on March 26th, 2020 (registration number: ChiCTR2000031276). https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/ChiCTR2000031276

A study on a target detection model for autonomous driving tasks

AbstractTarget detection in autonomous driving tasks presents a complex and critical challenge due to the diversity of targets and the intricacy of the environment. To address this issue, this paper proposes an enhanced YOLOv8 model. Firstly, the original large target detection head is removed and replaced with a detection head tailored for small targets and high‐level semantic details. Secondly, an adaptive feature fusion method is proposed, where input feature maps are processed using dilated convolutions with different dilation rates, followed by adaptive feature fusion to generate adaptive weights. Finally, an improved attention mechanism is incorporated to enhance the model's focus on target regions. Additionally, the impact of Group Shuffle Convolution (GSConv) on the model's detection speed is investigated. Validated on two public datasets, the model achieves a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 53.7% and 53.5%. Although introducing GSConv results in a slight decrease in mAP, it significantly improves frames per second. These findings underscore the effectiveness of the proposed model in autonomous driving tasks.

An Infrared Aircraft Detection Algorithm Based on Context Perception Feature Enhancement

To address the issue of insufficient extraction of target features and the resulting impact on detection performance in long-range infrared aircraft target detection caused by small imaging area and weak radiation intensity starting from the idea of perceiving target context to enhance the features extracted by convolutional neural network, this paper proposes a detecting algorithm based on AWFGLC (adaptive weighted fusion of global–local context). Based on the mechanism of AWFGLC, the input feature map is randomly reorganized and partitioned along the channel dimension, resulting in two feature maps. One feature map is utilized by self-attention for global context modeling, establishing the correlation between target features and background features to highlight the salient features of the target, thereby enabling the detecting algorithm to better perceive the global features of the target. The other feature map is subjected to window partitioning, with max pooling and average pooling performed within each window to highlight the local features of the target. Subsequently, self-attention is applied to the pooled feature map for local context modeling, establishing the correlation between the target and its surrounding neighborhood, further enhancing the weaker parts of the target features, and enabling the detecting algorithm to better perceive the local features of the target. Based on the characteristics of the target, an adaptive weighted fusion strategy with learnable parameters is employed to aggregate the global context and local context feature maps. This results in a feature map containing more complete target information, enhancing the ability of the detection algorithm to distinguish between target and background. Finally, this paper integrates the mechanism of AWFGLC into YOLOv7 for the detection of infrared aircraft targets. The experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves mAP50 scores of 97.8% and 88.7% on self-made and publicly available infrared aircraft datasets, respectively. Moreover, the mAP50:95 scores reach 65.7% and 61.2%, respectively. These results outperform those of classical target detection algorithms, indicating the effective realization of infrared aircraft target detection.

Enhancing Classification of Alzheimer’s Disease using Spatial Attention Mechanism

Aim This study aims to enhance the precision of Alzheimer's disease (AD) detection by integrating Spatial Attention Mechanism into a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture. Background Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by abnormal protein deposits in the brain, leading to nerve cell loss and posing a significant global health challenge. Early and accurate detection is crucial for disease management and treatment due to the lack of a cure and the disease's severe progression. Objective The objective of this research is to improve the accuracy of Alzheimer's disease classification using MRI data by implementing a Spatial Attention Mechanism in a CNN architecture. Methods The study utilized T1-weighted MRI data from the OASIS 1 and OASIS 2 datasets. The key innovation is the Spatial Attention layer incorporated within a CNN model, which computes the average of each channel in the input feature map. This layer guides subsequent layers to focus on critical brain regions, enhancing the model's accuracy in differentiating between Alzheimer's disease stages. Results The model achieved a validation accuracy of 99.69% with a sensitivity and specificity of 1.0000, demonstrating its reliability in distinguishing between different stages of Alzheimer's disease. The adaptability of the Spatial Attention layer allows the model to assign higher weights to crucial brain regions, improving its discriminative power. Conclusion The integration of the Spatial Attention Mechanism into the CNN architecture significantly contributes to the early detection of Alzheimer's disease, enabling timely interventions. This innovative approach has the potential to revolutionize Alzheimer's diagnosis by enhancing accuracy and offering a robust solution for classification.

EMG-YOLO: road crack detection algorithm for edge computing devices.

Road cracks significantly shorten the service life of roads. Manual detection methods are inefficient and costly. The YOLOv5 model has made some progress in road crack detection. However, issues arise when deployed on edge computing devices. The main problem is that edge computing devices are directly connected to sensors. This results in the collection of noisy, poor-quality data. This problem adds computational burden to the model, potentially impacting its accuracy. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel road crack detection algorithm named EMG-YOLO. First, an Efficient Decoupled Header is introduced in YOLOv5 to optimize the head structure. This approach separates the classification task from the localization task. Each task can then focus on learning its most relevant features. This significantly reduces the model's computational resources and time. It also achieves faster convergence rates. Second, the IOU loss function in the model is upgraded to the MPDIOU loss function. This function works by minimizing the top-left and bottom-right point distances between the predicted bounding box and the actual labeled bounding box. The MPDIOU loss function addresses the complex computation and high computational burden of the current YOLOv5 model. Finally, the GCC3 module replaces the traditional convolution. It performs global context modeling with the input feature map to obtain global context information. This enhances the model's detection capabilities on edge computing devices. Experimental results show that the improved model has better performance in all parameter indicators compared to current mainstream algorithms. The EMG-YOLO model improves the accuracy of the YOLOv5 model by 2.7%. The mAP (0.5) and mAP (0.9) are improved by 2.9% and 0.9%, respectively. The new algorithm also outperforms the YOLOv5 model in complex environments on edge computing devices. The EMG-YOLO algorithm proposed in this paper effectively addresses the issues of poor data quality and high computational burden on edge computing devices. This is achieved through optimizing the model head structure, upgrading the loss function, and introducing global context modeling. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in both accuracy and efficiency, especially in complex environments. Future research can further optimize this algorithm and explore more lightweight and efficient object detection models for edge computing devices.

Radiological image analysis using effective channel extension and fusion network based on COVID CT images

Attention mechanisms demonstrate significant capabilities in improving the performance of COVID CT image classification networks. Existing strategies often employ global pooling to acquire feature vectors, overlooking local feature information. Complex attention modules are then applied to enhance network performance, inevitably leading to increased model complexity. To address these issues, this paper introduces an Effective Channel Expansion and Fusion (ECEF) module specifically designed to enhance the performance of medical COVID CT image classification. The module represents a simple yet effective convolutional neural network module. In the channel direction of the given feature map, the module performs segmentation, conducts global pooling operations separately on the segmented and overall feature maps to obtain corresponding attention vectors, and merges them to produce high-dimensional attention vectors. Channel attention feature vectors are derived along the two pooling operation directions and dynamically fused. The resulting attention vectors are multiplied by the input feature map for adaptive feature refinement. Through these operations, the ECEF module adeptly captures local features in COVID CT images, enhancing the classification performance of medical COVID CT images. As a lightweight and versatile module, ECEF seamlessly integrates into any CNN architecture with negligible overhead. It can undergo end-to-end training alongside basic CNNs. ResNet is selected as the backbone network for empirical studies conducted on COVID CT images, including the COVID-CT dataset. Experimental results indicate that, compared to current advanced channel attention mechanisms, the ECEF module exhibits superior performance in COVID CT image classification tasks. The successful application of the ECEF module establishes a foundation for its widespread use in areas such as COVID CT medical image segmentation and object detection.

A lightweight Yunnan Xiaomila detection and pose estimation based on improved YOLOv8.

Yunnan Xiaomila is a pepper variety whose flowers and fruits become mature at the same time and multiple times a year. The distinction between the fruits and the background is low and the background is complex. The targets are small and difficult to identify. This paper aims at the problem of target detection of Yunnan Xiaomila under complex background environment, in order to reduce the impact caused by the small color gradient changes between xiaomila and background and the unclear feature information, an improved PAE-YOLO model is proposed, which combines the EMA attention mechanism and DCNv3 deformable convolution is integrated into the YOLOv8 model, which improves the model's feature extraction capability and inference speed for Xiaomila in complex environments, and achieves a lightweight model. First, the EMA attention mechanism is combined with the C2f module in the YOLOv8 network. The C2f module can well extract local features from the input image, and the EMA attention mechanism can control the global relationship. The two complement each other, thereby enhancing the model's expression ability; Meanwhile, in the backbone network and head network, the DCNv3 convolution module is introduced, which can adaptively adjust the sampling position according to the input feature map, contributing to stronger feature capture capabilities for targets of different scales and a lightweight network. It also uses a depth camera to estimate the posture of Xiaomila, while analyzing and optimizing different occlusion situations. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified through ablation experiments, model comparison experiments and attitude estimation experiments. The experimental results indicated that the model obtained an average mean accuracy (mAP) of 88.8%, which was 1.3% higher than that of the original model. Its F1 score reached 83.2, and the GFLOPs and model sizes were 7.6G and 5.7MB respectively. The F1 score ranked the best among several networks, with the model weight and gigabit floating-point operations per second (GFLOPs) being the smallest, which are 6.2% and 8.1% lower than the original model. The loss value was the lowest during training, and the convergence speed was the fastest. Meanwhile, the attitude estimation results of 102 targets showed that the orientation was correctly estimated exceed 85% of the cases, and the average error angle was 15.91°. In the occlusion condition, 86.3% of the attitude estimation error angles were less than 40°, and the average error angle was 23.19°. The results show that the improved detection model can accurately identify Xiaomila targets fruits, has higher model accuracy, less computational complexity, and can better estimate the target posture.

Fine Segmentation of Chinese Character Strokes Based on Coordinate Awareness and Enhanced BiFPN.

Considering the complex structure of Chinese characters, particularly the connections and intersections between strokes, there are challenges in low accuracy of Chinese character stroke extraction and recognition, as well as unclear segmentation. This study builds upon the YOLOv8n-seg model to propose the YOLOv8n-seg-CAA-BiFPN Chinese character stroke fine segmentation model. The proposed Coordinate-Aware Attention mechanism (CAA) divides the backbone network input feature map into four parts, applying different weights for horizontal, vertical, and channel attention to compute and fuse key information, thus capturing the contextual regularity of closely arranged stroke positions. The network's neck integrates an enhanced weighted bi-directional feature pyramid network (BiFPN), enhancing the fusion effect for features of strokes of various sizes. The Shape-IoU loss function is adopted in place of the traditional CIoU loss function, focusing on the shape and scale of stroke bounding boxes to optimize the bounding box regression process. Finally, the Grad-CAM++ technique is used to generate heatmaps of segmentation predictions, facilitating the visualization of effective features and a deeper understanding of the model's focus areas. Trained and tested on the public Chinese character stroke datasets CCSE-Kai and CCSE-HW, the model achieves an average accuracy of 84.71%, an average recall rate of 83.65%, and a mean average precision of 80.11%. Compared to the original YOLOv8n-seg and existing mainstream segmentation models like SegFormer, BiSeNetV2, and Mask R-CNN, the average accuracy improved by 3.50%, 4.35%, 10.56%, and 22.05%, respectively; the average recall rates improved by 4.42%, 9.32%, 15.64%, and 24.92%, respectively; and the mean average precision improved by 3.11%, 4.15%, 8.02%, and 19.33%, respectively. The results demonstrate that the YOLOv8n-seg-CAA-BiFPN network can accurately achieve Chinese character stroke segmentation.

A Robust CoS-PVNet Pose Estimation Network in Complex Scenarios

Object 6D pose estimation, as a key technology in applications such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), robotics, and autonomous driving, requires the prediction of the 3D position and 3D pose of objects robustly from complex scene images. However, complex environmental factors such as occlusion, noise, weak texture, and lighting changes may affect the accuracy and robustness of object 6D pose estimation. We propose a robust CoS-PVNet (complex scenarios pixel-wise voting network) pose estimation network for complex scenes. By adding a pixel-weight layer based on the PVNet network, more accurate pixel point vectors are selected, and dilated convolution and adaptive weighting strategies are used to capture local and global contextual information of the input feature map. At the same time, the perspective-n-point localization algorithm is used to accurately locate 2D key points to solve the pose of 6D objects, and then, the transformation relationship matrix of 6D pose projection is solved. The research results indicate that on the LineMod and Occlusion LineMod datasets, CoS-PVNet has high accuracy and can achieve stable and robust 6D pose estimation even in complex scenes.

Self-supervised monocular visual odometry based on cross-correlation

Visual odometry constitutes a critical component in enabling autonomous navigation. However, the existing methods are limited by the feature extraction and matching accuracy, and cannot show good real-time performance while combining accuracy and robustness. In this paper, we propose a novel monocular visual odometry framework based on cross-correlation. The framework starts with a parameter-sharing Siamese network to build feature extractors that can simultaneously process multiple images as inputs. Moreover, we design cross-correlation modules and define a cross-correlation matrix to describe the strength of correlation between different parts of the input feature maps, reflecting the rotational and translational transformations of the input images. Furthermore, a novel loss function is introduced to impose constraints on the network. Additionally, a fully convolutional network is designed for pose estimation, computing poses alterations from the structure of the cross-correlation matrix. Channel attention and spatial attention mechanisms are introduced to improve the performance. More importantly, our method innovatively uses time intervals as labels, enables self-supervised training, and relies only on a monocular camera. Experimental results on the KITTI visual odometry dataset and the Oxford Robotcar Dataset show that our method produces competitive performance, demonstrating the superiority of the proposed method.

Alzheimer’s Disease Detection via Multiscale Feature Modelling Using Improved Spatial Attention Guided Depth Separable CNN

Early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is critical due to its rising prevalence. AI-aided AD diagnosis has grown for decades. Most of these systems use deep learning using CNN. However, a few concerns must be addressed to identify AD: a. there is a lack of attention paid to spatial features; b. there is a lack of scale-invariant feature modelling; and c. the convolutional spatial attention block (C-SAB) mechanism is available in the literature, but it exploits limited feature sets from its input features to obtain a spatial attention map, which needs to be enhanced. The suggested model addresses these issues in two ways: through a backbone of multilayers of depth-separable CNN. Firstly, we propose an improved spatial convolution attention block (I-SAB) to generate an enhanced spatial attention map for the multilayer features of the backbone. The I-SAB, a modified version of the C-SAB, generates a spatial attention map by combining multiple cues from input feature maps. Such a map is forwarded to a multilayer of depth-separable CNN for further feature extraction and employs a skip connection to produce an enhanced spatial attention map. Second, we combine multilayer spatial attention features to make scale-invariant spatial attention features that can fix scale issues in MRI images. We demonstrate extensive experimentation and ablation studies using two open-source datasets, OASIS and AD-Dataset. The recommended model outperforms existing best practices with 99.75% and 96.20% accuracy on OASIS and AD-Dataset. This paper also performed a domain adaptation test on the OASIS dataset, which obtained 83.25% accuracy.