A Domain Decompositionbased CNN Architecture for High-Resolution Image Segmentation
Corne Verburg (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Alexander Heinlein – Mentor (TU Delft - Numerical Analysis)
D.J.P. Lahaye – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Mathematical Physics)
K. Vuik – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics)
Eric Cyr – Mentor
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Abstract
This thesis addresses the challenge of segmenting ultra-high-resolution images. Limitations of current approaches to segment these are that either detailed spatial contextual information is lost or many redundant computations are necessary. To overcome these issues, we propose a novel approach combining the U-Net architecture with domain decomposition strategies to balance incorporating spatial context and maintaining computational efficiency. Our proposed method partitions input images into non-overlapping patches, each processed independently on a separate device. A communication network facilitates the exchange of information between patches, enhancing the model's understanding of the spatial context.
Through theoretical analysis and practical experimentation on device memory usage during training, we demonstrate that our approach incurs minimal additional memory overhead for inter-device communication. Evaluation on synthetic and realistic datasets, including the Inria Aerial Image and DeepGlobe Satellite Segmentation datasets, demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach. Our model achieves competitive performance compared to the baseline U-Net model, with consistent class predictions around boundaries. Visualization of feature maps highlights the role of the communication network in transferring contextual information. Furthermore, it is shown that our approach remains scalable even when trained on limited subdomains.
In conclusion, our proposed model offers an intuitive solution for segmenting ultra-high-resolution images by effectively incorporating spatial context. Future research could explore variations of our model, such as overlapping subdomains or communication on different levels of the U-Net, to further enhance boundary consistency and information transfer.