Instance Segmentation Based on Improved Self-Adaptive Normalization

The single batch normalization (BN) method is commonly used in the instance segmentation algorithms. The batch size is concerned with some drawbacks. A too small sample batch size leads to a sharp drop in accuracy, but a too large batch may result in the memory overflow of graphic processing units (GPU). These problems make BN not feasible to some instance segmentation tasks with inappropriate batch sizes. The self-adaptive normalization (SN) method, with an adaptive weight loss layer, shows good performance in instance segmentation algorithms, such as the YOLACT. However, the parameter averaging mechanism in the SN method is prone to problems in the weight learning and assignment process. In response to such a problem, the paper proposes to replace the single BN with an adaptive weight loss layer in SN models, based on which a weight learning method is developed. The proposed method increases the input feature expression ability of the subsequent layers. By building a Pytorch deep learning framework, the proposed method is validated in the MS-COCO data set and Autonomous Driving Cityscapes data set. The experimental results prove that the proposed method is effective in processing samples independent from the batch size. The stable accuracy for all kinds of target segmentation is achieved, and the overall loss value is significantly reduced at the same time. The convergence speed of the network is also improved.