Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features

Fully convolutional networks (FCNs) play an significant role in salient object detection tasks, due to the capability of extracting abundant multi-level and multi-scale features. However, most of FCN-based models utilize multi-level features in a single indiscriminative manner, which is difficult to...

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Main Authors: Shanmei Lu, Qiang Guo, Yongxia Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2020-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9170598/
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author Shanmei Lu
Qiang Guo
Yongxia Zhang
author_facet Shanmei Lu
Qiang Guo
Yongxia Zhang
author_sort Shanmei Lu
collection DOAJ
description Fully convolutional networks (FCNs) play an significant role in salient object detection tasks, due to the capability of extracting abundant multi-level and multi-scale features. However, most of FCN-based models utilize multi-level features in a single indiscriminative manner, which is difficult to accurately predict saliency maps. To address this problem, in this article, we propose a recurrent network which uses hierarchical attention features as a guidance for salient object detection. First of all, we divide multi-level features into low-level features and high-level features. Multi-scale features are extracted from high-level features using atrous convolutions with different receptive fields to obtain contextual information. Meanwhile, low-level features are refined as supplement to add detailed information in convolutional features. It is observed that the attention focus of hierarchical features is considerably different because of their distinct information representations. For this reason, a two-stage attention module is introduced for hierarchical features to guide the generation of saliency maps. Effective hierarchial attention features are obtained by aggregating the low-level and high-level features, but the attention of integrated features may be biased, leading to deviations in the detected salient regions. Therefore, we design a recurrent guidance network to correct the biased salient regions, which can effectively suppress the distractions in background and progressively refine salient objects boundaries. Experimental results show that our method exhibits superior performance in both quantitative and qualitative assessments on several widely used benchmark datasets.
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spelling doaj.art-0a89e388997c497fb40fe4beb24593472022-12-21T20:37:31ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362020-01-01815132515133410.1109/ACCESS.2020.30175129170598Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention FeaturesShanmei Lu0Qiang Guo1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4219-3528Yongxia Zhang2School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan, ChinaFully convolutional networks (FCNs) play an significant role in salient object detection tasks, due to the capability of extracting abundant multi-level and multi-scale features. However, most of FCN-based models utilize multi-level features in a single indiscriminative manner, which is difficult to accurately predict saliency maps. To address this problem, in this article, we propose a recurrent network which uses hierarchical attention features as a guidance for salient object detection. First of all, we divide multi-level features into low-level features and high-level features. Multi-scale features are extracted from high-level features using atrous convolutions with different receptive fields to obtain contextual information. Meanwhile, low-level features are refined as supplement to add detailed information in convolutional features. It is observed that the attention focus of hierarchical features is considerably different because of their distinct information representations. For this reason, a two-stage attention module is introduced for hierarchical features to guide the generation of saliency maps. Effective hierarchial attention features are obtained by aggregating the low-level and high-level features, but the attention of integrated features may be biased, leading to deviations in the detected salient regions. Therefore, we design a recurrent guidance network to correct the biased salient regions, which can effectively suppress the distractions in background and progressively refine salient objects boundaries. Experimental results show that our method exhibits superior performance in both quantitative and qualitative assessments on several widely used benchmark datasets.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9170598/Salient object detectionhierarchical featuresattention modulerecurrent network
spellingShingle Shanmei Lu
Qiang Guo
Yongxia Zhang
Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features
IEEE Access
Salient object detection
hierarchical features
attention module
recurrent network
title Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features
title_full Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features
title_fullStr Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features
title_full_unstemmed Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features
title_short Salient Object Detection Using Recurrent Guidance Network With Hierarchical Attention Features
title_sort salient object detection using recurrent guidance network with hierarchical attention features
topic Salient object detection
hierarchical features
attention module
recurrent network
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9170598/
work_keys_str_mv AT shanmeilu salientobjectdetectionusingrecurrentguidancenetworkwithhierarchicalattentionfeatures
AT qiangguo salientobjectdetectionusingrecurrentguidancenetworkwithhierarchicalattentionfeatures
AT yongxiazhang salientobjectdetectionusingrecurrentguidancenetworkwithhierarchicalattentionfeatures