Authors:
Teerath Kumar
1
;
Alessandra Mileo
2
and
Malika Bendechache
3
Affiliations:
1
CRT-AI & ADAPT Research Centre, School of Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
;
2
INSIGHT & I-Form Research Centre, School of Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
;
3
ADAPT & Lero Research Centres, School of Computer Science, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland
Keyword(s):
Data Augmentation, Deep Learning, Image Classification, Saliency Augmentation.
Abstract:
Improving model generalization in computer vision, especially with noisy or incomplete data, remains a significant challenge. One common solution is image augmentation through occlusion techniques like cutout, random erasing, hide-and-seek, and gridmask. These methods encourage models to focus on less critical information, enhancing robustness. However, they often obscure real objects completely, leading to noisy data or loss of important context, which can cause overfitting. To address these issues, we propose a novel augmentation method, RandSaliencyAug (RSA). RSA identifies salient regions in an image and applies one of six new strategies: Row Slice Erasing, Column Slice Erasing, Row-Column Saliency Erasing, Partial Saliency Erasing, Horizontal Half Saliency Erasing, and Vertical Half Saliency Erasing. RSA is available in two versions: Weighted RSA (W-RSA), which selects policies based on performance, and Non-Weighted RSA (N-RSA), which selects randomly. By preserving contextual i
nformation while introducing occlusion, RSA improves model generalization. Experiments on Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR10, CIFAR100, and ImageNet show that W-RSA outperforms existing methods.
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