Paper ID: 2402.00033

LF-ViT: Reducing Spatial Redundancy in Vision Transformer for Efficient Image Recognition

Youbing Hu, Yun Cheng, Anqi Lu, Zhiqiang Cao, Dawei Wei, Jie Liu, Zhijun Li

The Vision Transformer (ViT) excels in accuracy when handling high-resolution images, yet it confronts the challenge of significant spatial redundancy, leading to increased computational and memory requirements. To address this, we present the Localization and Focus Vision Transformer (LF-ViT). This model operates by strategically curtailing computational demands without impinging on performance. In the Localization phase, a reduced-resolution image is processed; if a definitive prediction remains elusive, our pioneering Neighborhood Global Class Attention (NGCA) mechanism is triggered, effectively identifying and spotlighting class-discriminative regions based on initial findings. Subsequently, in the Focus phase, this designated region is used from the original image to enhance recognition. Uniquely, LF-ViT employs consistent parameters across both phases, ensuring seamless end-to-end optimization. Our empirical tests affirm LF-ViT's prowess: it remarkably decreases Deit-S's FLOPs by 63\% and concurrently amplifies throughput twofold. Code of this project is at https://github.com/edgeai1/LF-ViT.git.

Submitted: Jan 8, 2024