Fully Convolutional Autoencoder (FCN)

Table of Contents

1.1. 2D Convolution¶

tf.keras.layers.Conv2D(filters, kernel_size, strides, padding, activation, kernel_regularizer, input_shape)
    filters = 32
    kernel_size = (3,3)
    strides = (1,1)
    padding = 'SAME'
    activeation='relu'
    kernel_regularizer=tf.keras.regularizers.l2(0.04)
    input_shape = tensor of shape([input_h, input_w, input_ch])

  • filter size

    • the number of channels.
  • kernel_size

    • the height and width of the 2D convolution window.
  • stride

    • the step size of the kernel when traversing the image.
  • padding

    • how the border of a sample is handled.
    • A padded convolution will keep the spatial output dimensions equal to the input, whereas unpadded convolutions will crop away some of the borders if the kernel is larger than 1.
    • 'SAME' : enable zero padding
    • 'VALID' : disable zero padding
  • activation

    • Activation function to use.
  • kernel_regularizer

    • Initializer for the kernel weights matrix.
  • input and output channels

    • A convolutional layer takes a certain number of input channels ($C$) and calculates a specific number of output channels ($D$).

Examples


input = [None, 4, 4, 1]
filter size = [3, 3, 1, 1]
strides = [1, 1, 1, 1]
padding = 'VALID'
input = [None, 5, 5, 1]
filter size = [3, 3, 1, 1]
strides = [1, 1, 1, 1]
padding = 'SAME'

1.2. Transposed Convolution¶


  • The need for transposed convolutions generally arises from the desire to use a transformation going in the opposite direction of a normal convolution, i.e., from something that has the shape of the output of some convolution to something that has the shape of its input while maintaining a connectivity pattern that is compatible with said convolution. For instance, one might use such a transformation as the decoding layer of a convolutional autoencoder or to project feature maps to a higher-dimensional space.

  • Some sources use the name deconvolution, which is inappropriate because it’s not a deconvolution. To make things worse deconvolutions do exists, but they’re not common in the field of deep learning.

  • An actual deconvolution reverts the process of a convolution.

  • Imagine inputting an image into a single convolutional layer. Now take the output, throw it into a black box and out comes your original image again. This black box does a deconvolution. It is the mathematical inverse of what a convolutional layer does.

  • A transposed convolution is somewhat similar because it produces the same spatial resolution a hypothetical deconvolutional layer would. However, the actual mathematical operation that’s being performed on the values is different.

  • A transposed convolutional layer carries out a regular convolution but reverts its spatial transformation.


tf.keras.layers.Conv2DTranspose(filters, kernel_size, strides, padding = 'SAME', activation)
    filter = number of channels/ 64
    kernel_size = tensor of shape (3,3)
    strides = stride of the sliding window for each dimension of the input tensor
    padding = 'SAME'
    activation = activation functions('softmax', 'relu' ...)

  • 'SAME' : enable zero padding
  • 'VALID' : disable zero padding

An image of 5x5 is fed into a convolutional layer. The stride is set to 2, the padding is deactivated and the kernel is 3x3. This results in a 2x2 image.

2D convolution with no padding, no stride and kernel of 3

If we wanted to reverse this process, we’d need the inverse mathematical operation so that 9 values are generated from each pixel we input. Afterward, we traverse the output image with a stride of 2. This would be a deconvolution.

A transposed convolution does not do that. The only thing in common is it guarantees that the output will be a 5x5 image as well, while still performing a normal convolution operation. To achieve this, we need to perform some fancy padding on the input.

Transposed 2D convolution with no padding, stride of 2 and kernel of 3

It merely reconstructs the spatial resolution from before and performs a convolution. This may not be the mathematical inverse, but for Encoder-Decoder architectures, it’s still very helpful. This way we can combine the upscaling of an image with a convolution, instead of doing two separate processes.

  • Another example of transposed convolution