Convolutional Neural Networks

Also known as CNN

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Latest papers 399

39 papers in the last four weeks, up 26% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

May 4, 2026

Advanced Tumor Segmentation in PET/CT Imaging: A Training Strategy Study with nnU-Net for AutoPET III

Tumor segmentation in whole-body PET/CT imaging is crucial for precise disease evaluation and treatment planning. However, it remains challenging due to variability in lesion size, contrast, and anatomical distribution. Relying on manual segmentation makes the process time-consuming and prone to intra- and inter-observer variability. This work presents a whole-body tumor segmentation method developed for the AutoPET III challenge, where the goal is to build models that generalize across tracers and multi-center data. We employ the nnU-Net framework with a ResNet-based encoder as our baseline and systematically investigate the impact of training strategies, including intensity normalization, batch dice optimization, and data augmentation using CraveMix. Our experiments show that these strategies significantly influence model performance, particularly in reducing false positives and improving robustness to lesion variability. The best-performing configuration achieves a Dice score of up to 0.80 on the preliminary test phase, and our method ranked third in the AutoPET III challenge. The code is publicly available here.

Hussain Alasmawi

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

PET/CT Imaging Medical Image Segmentation 3D Medical Image Segmentation Convolutional Neural Networks PET/CT Tumor Segmentation

May 4, 2026

RAFNet: Region-Aware Fusion Network for Pansharpening

Pansharpening aims to generate high-resolution multispectral (HRMS) images by fusing low-resolution multispectral (LRMS) and high-resolution panchromatic (PAN) images. Although deep learning has advanced this field, mainstream frequency-based methods relying on standard scaled dot-product attention suffer from quadratic computational complexity and fail to exploit the inherent regional sparsity of remote sensing imagery. Furthermore, existing spatial enhancement strategies typically employ static convolution kernels, which struggle to adapt to the complex frequency and regional variations of PAN and MS images. To address these bottlenecks, we propose a Region-Aware Fusion (RAFNet) Network that synergistically models spatial and frequency information. Specifically, we design a Spatial Adaptive Refinement (SAR) module that leverages the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for directional frequency separation and K-means clustering for regional partitioning, which enables the dynamic construction of region-specific adaptive convolution kernels, achieving spatially and frequency-adaptive feature enhancement. Moreover, we introduce a Clustered Frequency Aggregation (CFA) module based on a sparse attention mechanism guided by the semantic clusters, which executes a region-aware sparse attention strategy that drastically reduces computational redundancy while ensuring high-quality frequency feature extraction. In addition we integrated these modules into a progressive, multi-level spatial-frequency network architecture to facilitate robust interaction and accurate image reconstruction. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed RAFNet significantly outperforms state-of-the-art pansharpening methods in both reduced- and full-resolution assessments. The code is available at https://github.com/PatrickNod/RAFNet.

Jianing Zhang, Zijian Zhou, Kai Sun

College of Artificial Intelligence, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China · School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

Dynamic Convolution Frequency-Domain Feature Learning Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Remote Sensing Convolutional Neural Networks

May 3, 2026

Misclassification Rate and Privacy-Utility Trade-offs in Graph Convolutional Networks via Subsampling Stability

We study differential privacy (DP) in Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) through the framework of subsampling stability. We derive upper bounds on the misclassification rate that depend explicitly on the subsampling probability

p_s

. Furthermore, we characterize the privacy--utility trade-off by identifying feasible ranges of

p_s

; if

p_s

is too large, the stability-based privacy condition becomes difficult to satisfy, yielding vacuous guarantees, whereas if it is too small, accuracy deteriorates. Our results provide the first rigorous theoretical framework for understanding subsampling stability in GCNs under DP.

Yexin Zhang, Zhongtian Ma, Qiaosheng Zhang +1

School of Cybersecurity, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China · Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Shanghai, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute, Shanghai, China

Algorithmic Stability Privacy-Preserving ML Differential Privacy Convolutional Neural Networks Privacy-Utility Tradeoff

May 3, 2026

EAPFusion: Intrinsic Evolving Auxiliary Prior Guidance for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion

Infrared-visible image fusion aims to create an information-rich fused image by integrating the complementary thermal saliency from infrared sensing and fine textures from visible imaging. Such accurate fusion is essential for real-world perception applications in complex scenes, including nighttime autonomous driving, search and rescue, and surveillance, and can further benefit downstream tasks such as semantic segmentation. However, most existing fusion methods rely upon static trained weights that cannot adapt to scene-specific content at inference time, and often suffer from a granularity mismatch when coarse auxiliary semantics are injected, which makes it difficult to simultaneously highlight targets and preserve details. In this work, we propose EAPFusion to address these issues by using self-evolving intrinsic priors instead of relying on external auxiliary models. Concretely, EAPFusion maintains a compact set of intrinsic priors and progressively updates them across scales. These evolved priors are utilized to dynamically generate convolutional kernels, shifting the paradigm from fixed, pre-trained filters to instance-adaptive parameters via prior-conditioned dynamic convolution. Furthermore, we design a channel-level fusion module that shuffles and interleaves infrared and visible channels, applying local channel mixing to boost cross-modal complementarity. Experiments on different datasets, including cross-dataset evaluation and semantic segmentation, show that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative fusion results, and consistently boosts downstream performance. Code is coming soon.

Zhenyu Sun, Luobin Zhang, Axi Niu +2

Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

Dynamic Convolution Multi-Source Image Fusion Infrared-Visible Image Fusion Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Convolutional Neural Networks Multimodal Fusion

May 2, 2026

Sparse Representation Learning for Vessels

Analyzing human vasculature and vessel-like, tubular structures, such as airways, is crucial for disease diagnosis and treatment. Current methods often rely on small sub-regions or simplified tree-like structures, rendering analysis of entire organ-level networks at clinical resolution computationally challenging. To this end, we propose VAEsselSparse, an efficient encoder-decoder model to obtain a meaningful yet compact representation of the entire organ-level vascular network at sub-millimeter resolution. VAEsselSparse leverages the inherent sparsity of 3D vascular structures via sparse convolutions and attention mechanisms, achieving substantial spatial compression rates of 8 x 8 x 8. We demonstrate superior reconstruction performance compared to dense counterparts and previous methods. Importantly, the resulting latent space retains clinically relevant discriminative features readily usable for classification tasks, such as aneurysm/stenosis or subvariants of the circle of Willis. Moreover, the compact latent space of VAEsselSparse serves as an effective representation for learning vessel-specific priors through generative models, enabling the synthesis of realistic vasculature.

Chinmay Prabhakar, Bastian Wittmann, Paul Büschl +3

Department of Quantitative Biomedicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland · ETH AI Center, ETH Zurich, Switzerland · Department of Diagnostic Radiology, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Variational Autoencoders 3D Medical Imaging Convolutional Neural Networks Medical Image Representation Learning

May 2, 2026

Developing a Strong Pre-Trained Base Model for Plant Leaf Disease Classification

Plants, crops and their yields are essential to our very existence, but diseases and pests cause large losses every year. As such it is vital to ensure that diseases can be spotted early and treated accordingly and stopping the spread while still possible. Manual and traditional methods require personal to walk through the field and check for symptoms 'by hand'. This is very laborious and very time consuming, so ML methods have been applied as a result and they have garnered promising results. CNN models are especially efficient as they can automatically extract features from images without any manual feature construction before then feeding the features to a classifier. Datasets are largely influential to the final performance of the model. Despite the importance that datasets pose to the field, there still seems to be somewhat of a discrepancy between what is publicly available for use and what would be required to sufficiently train fully capable models. To overcome these shortcomings, as part of this thesis open datasets for the field of plant leaf disease classification have been identified as well as models that can be trained on them and extensive benchmarks have been carried out to identify their suitability. Then a new dataset was constructed based on those findings as well as on the findings of a augmentation applicability study, which will be used to train a new Base Model based on the DenseNet201 architecture, which managed to outperform the baseline model on said new dataset as well as outperforming it on plant leaf disease classification domain specific Transfer-Learning experiments on another new dataset. This new model manages to train models through Transfer-Learning (TL) faster, more robust, more stable, and with less data than general model would, overcoming a large number of issues that the field still suffers from.

David J. Richter

Department of Artiﬁcial Intelligence Convergence Graduate School, Chonnam National University

Plant Disease Classification Transfer Learning Convolutional Neural Networks Data-Efficient Learning

Apr 30, 2026

Parameter-Efficient Architectural Modifications for Translation-Invariant CNNs

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are widely assumed to be translation-invariant, yet standard architectures exhibit a startling fragility: even a single-pixel shift can drastically degrade performance due to their reliance on spatially dependent fully connected layers. In this work, we resolve this vulnerability by proposing a lightweight 'Online Architecture' strategy. By strategically inserting Global Average Pooling (GAP) layers at various network depths, we effectively decouple feature recognition from spatial location. Using VGG-16 as a primary case study, we demonstrate that this architectural modification achieves a massive 98% reduction in trainable parameters (from 5.2M to just 82K) and a 90% reduction in total network size (138M to 14M). Despite this drastic pruning, our variants maintain competitive Top-1 accuracy on ImageNet (66.4%) while doubling translational robustness, reducing average relative loss from 0.09 to 0.05. Furthermore, our analysis identifies a fundamental limit to invariance: while GAP resolves macroscopic sensitivity, discrete pooling operations introduce a residual periodic aliasing that prevents perfect pixel-level stability. Finally, we extend these findings to Perceptual Image Quality Assessment (IQA) by integrating our invariant backbones into the LPIPS framework. The resulting metric significantly outperforms the retrained baseline in generalization across the KADID-10k dataset (Spearman 0.89 vs. 0.75) and achieves a near-perfect alignment with human psychophysical response curves on the RAID dataset (Spearman 0.95). These results confirm that enforcing architectural invariance is a far more efficient and biologically plausible path to robustness than traditional data augmentation. Data and code are publicly available. The data and code are publicly available to facilitate validation and further research.

Nuria Alabau-Bosque, Jorge Vila-Tomas, Paula Dauden-Oliver +2

Image Processing Lab, Universitat de València, Carrer del Catedr´atic Jos´e Beltr´an Martinez, Paterna, 46980, Spain.

Neural Network Robustness Convolutional Neural Networks Invariant Representation Learning Neural Network Compression

Apr 30, 2026

Robust Lightweight Crack Classification for Real-Time UAV Bridge Inspection

With the widespread application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in bridge structural health monitoring, deep learning-based automatic crack detection has become a major research focus. However, practical UAV inspections still face four key challenges: weak crack features, degraded imaging conditions, severe class imbalance, and limited computational resources for practical UAV inspection workflows. To address these issues, this paper proposes a unified lightweight convolutional neural network framework composed of four synergistic components: a lightweight backbone network, a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) for channel and spatial enhancement, a directed robust augmentation strategy based on inspection-scene priors, and Focal Loss for hard-sample learning under class imbalance. Experiments on the SDNET2018 bridge deck dataset show that the proposed method achieves an inference speed of 825 FPS with only 11.21M parameters and 1.82G FLOPs. Compared with the baseline model, the complete framework improves the F1-score by 2.51% and recall by 3.95%. In addition, Grad-CAM visualizations indicate that the introduced attention module shifts the model's focus from scattered regions to precise tracking along crack trajectories. Overall, this study achieves a strong balance among accuracy, speed, and robustness, providing a practical solution for ground-station assisted real-time deployment in UAV bridge inspections. The source code is available at: https://github.com/skylynf/AttXNet .

Wei Li, Haisheng Li, Weijie Li +3

Bay Area Super Bridge Maintenance Technology Center, Guangdong Provincial Highway Construction Co., Ltd., Guangdong, China · Guangdong AIHISUN Technology Co., Ltd., Guangdong, China

Convolutional Neural Networks Lightweight CNNs Structural Health Monitoring

Apr 30, 2026

Adjoint Inversion Reveals Holographic Superposition and Destructive Interference in CNN Classifiers

A foundational assumption in CNN interpretability -- that deep encoders suppress background pixels while classifiers merely select from a cleaned feature pool (the Spatial Funnel Hypothesis) -- remains untested due to spatial hallucinations in existing visualization tools. We address this by introducing a hallucination-free inversion framework built on magnitude-phase decoupling and Local Adjoint Correctors. Our method mathematically guarantees that the spatial gradient support of every reconstruction stems strictly from genuinely active channels. Using this framework as a geometric probe, we uncover the first pixel-level evidence of strong superposition in vision encoders. We show that per-channel inversions are uniformly holographic: positive and negative weight reconstructions are visually and energetically indistinguishable. However, their algebraic sum sharply concentrates on the foreground. This proves classification operates via destructive interference -- classifier weights cancel a shared background direction in pixel space and constructively assemble class-discriminative residuals, directly falsifying the Spatial Funnel Hypothesis. This interference model identifies the volume of the admissible interference subspace as the geometric quantity governing channel requirements. We prove this volume is dual to the GAP covariance determinant, yielding a covariance-volume channel selection algorithm with a

(1-1/e)

approximation guarantee. This algorithm mathematically reveals out-of-distribution (OOD) failure as a measurable collapse of the covariance volume essential for interference-based classification. Our framework extends seamlessly to attention-based heads without retraining.

Kaixiang Shu

Independent Researcher · Chongqing, China

Feature Superposition Neural Network Interpretability Convolutional Neural Networks

Apr 29, 2026

Remaining Useful Life Estimation for Turbofan Engines: A Comparative Study of Classical, CNN, and LSTM Approaches

Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation is a critical component of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), enabling proactive maintenance scheduling and reducing unplanned failures in industrial equipment. This paper presents a comparative study of machine learning approaches for RUL estimation on the NASA C-MAPSS turbofan engine dataset: classical baselines (Ridge Regression, Polynomial Ridge, and XGBoost), a 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. All models are evaluated on the FD001 and FD003 subsets under an identical preprocessing pipeline to ensure a fair comparison. Among raw-sequence models, the LSTM achieves RMSE of 14.93 and 14.20 on FD001 and FD003 respectively, outperforming the deep LSTM reported by Zheng et al.~\cite{paper} (RMSE 16.14 and 16.18) despite using a simpler single-layer architecture. The 1D CNN achieves RMSE of 16.97 on FD001 and 15.68 on FD003, demonstrating competitive performance on FD003 while producing more conservative RUL predictions on FD001. Ridge Regression is evaluated on raw and engineered features, while other classical models use only engineered inputs. XGBoost achieves an RMSE of 13.36 on FD003, highlighting the competitiveness of nonlinear modeling.

Astitva Goel, Samarth Galchar, Sumit Kanu

Khoury College of Computer Science, Northeastern University

RUL Estimation Predictive Maintenance Long Short-Term Memory Networks Convolutional Neural Networks

Apr 29, 2026

A Multi-Dataset Benchmark of Multiple Instance Learning for 3D Neuroimage Classification

Despite being resource-intensive to train, 3D convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been the standard approach to classify CT and MRI scans. Recent work suggests that deep multiple instance learning (MIL) may be a more efficient alternative for 3D brain scans, especially when the pre-trained image encoder used to embed each 2D slice is frozen and only the pooling operation and classifier are trained. In this paper, we provide a systematic comparison of simple MIL, attention-based MIL, 3D CNNs, and 3D ViTs across three CT and four MRI datasets, including two large datasets of at least 10,000 scans. Our goal is to help resource-constrained practitioners understand which neural networks work well for 3D neuroimages and why. We further compare design choices for attention-based MIL, including different encoders, pooling operations, and architectural orderings. We find that simple mean pooling MIL, without any learnable attention, matches or outperforms recent MIL or 3D CNN alternatives on 4 of 6 moderate-sized tasks. This baseline remains competitive on two large datasets while being 25x faster to train. To explain mean pooling's success, we examine per-slice attention quality and a semi-synthetic dataset where we can derive the best possible classifier via a Bayes estimator. This analysis reveals the limits of existing MIL approaches and suggests routes for future improvements.

Ethan Harvey, Dennis Johan Loevlie, Amir Ali Satani +3

Department of Computer Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA · Predictive Analytics and Comparative Effectiveness Center, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA · Department of Research and Evaluation, Kaiser Permanente Southern California, Pasadena, CA, USA

3D ViTs Convolutional Neural Networks Neuroimaging Medical Image Benchmarks Multiple Instance Learning

Apr 29, 2026

MTCurv: Deep learning for direct microtubule curvature mapping in noisy fluorescence microscopy images

Accurate quantification of the geometry of curvilinear biological structures is essential for understanding cellular mechanics and disease-related morphological alterations. Microtubule curvature is a key descriptor of filament rigidity and mechanical perturbations. However, reliable curvature extraction from fluorescence microscopy images remains challenging due to noise, low contrast, and partial filament visibility. Existing approaches rely on segmentation pipelines with pre or post-processing, which are highly sensitive to segmentation errors and often fail under adverse imaging conditions. In this work, we propose MTCurv, a deep learning framework for direct, segmenta-tion-free regression of microtubule curvature maps from noisy microscopy images. Leveraging a synthetic dataset with pixel-wise curvature annotations, we reformulated curvature estimation as a regression problem and adapted an attention-based residual U-Net. To reduce hallucinations and enforce spatial coherence, we introduced a gradient-aware loss combining Mean Squared Error with a gradient consistency term. Beyond model and loss design, we evaluated commonly used regression and image quality metrics, revealing that many perceptual and blind metrics are poorly suited for curvature estimation. Correlation-based metrics, particularly Spearman correlation, emerged as more reliable indicators of curvature prediction quality. Experiments on two datasets of increasing difficulty demonstrated that MTCurv accurately recovers local microtubule curvatures, even in the presence of background fluorescence. Ablation studies highlighted the contribution of both residual encoding and attention-based decoding. Overall, this work provides a practical tool for filament curvature analysis and methodological insights for geometry-aware regression in biomedical imaging. Datasets and code are made available.

Achraf Ait Laydi, Sidi Mohamed Sid'El Moctar, Yousef El Mourabit +1

TIAD Laboratory, Sciences and Technology Faculty, Sultan Moulay Slimane Univ., Beni Mellal, Morocco. · CNRS, Univ. Rennes, IGDR (Institut de Génétique et Développement de Rennes), UMR6290, 35000 Rennes, France

Convolutional Neural Networks Microscopy Image Analysis

Apr 29, 2026

Evaluation of Convolutional and Transformer-Based Detectors for Weed Detection in Tomato Plantations

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of convolutional and transformer-based object detection architectures for early weed detection in tomato plantations. Representative models from each paradigm are considered, including YOLOv26-nano, a recent variant of the YOLO family, and RT-DETR Large and RF-DETR Medium as transformer-based architectures. The evaluation was conducted on the GROUNDBASED_WEED dataset, considering six weed classes and an additional category corresponding to unidentified plants, which allowed for the assessment of performance in terms of detection accuracy and computational efficiency using metrics such as precision, recall, average precision, and inference speed, as well as non-parametric statistical tests. The results highlight a clear trade-off between efficiency and contextual modeling: CNN-based detectors achieve high performance at a lower computational cost, while transformer-based approaches offer better global context capture at the expense of higher resource demands. These results provide practical criteria for model selection in precision agriculture applications.

Alcides Toledo Espinosa, Gerardo Antonio Álvarez Hernández, Ángel Eduardo Zamora-Suárez +2

Instituto Politécnico Nacional · CIDETEC-IPN · Mexico City, Mexico +1

Agricultural Image Analysis Weed Detection Detection Transformer Object Detection Convolutional Neural Networks

Apr 28, 2026

MixerCA: An Efficient and Accurate Model for High-Performance Hyperspectral Image Classification

Over the past decade, hyperspectral image (HSI) classification has drawn considerable interest due to HSIs' ability to effectively distinguish terrestrial objects by capturing detailed, continuous spectral information. The strong performance of recent deep learning techniques in tasks like image classification and semantic segmentation has led to their growing use in HSI classification, due to their ability to capture complex spatial and spectral features more effectively than traditional methods. This paper presents MixerCA, a novel lightweight model for HSI classification that leverages depthwise convolution and a self-attention mechanism. MixerCA integrates depth-wise convolutions, token and channel mixing, and coordinate attention into a unified structure to decouple spatial and channel interactions, maintain consistent resolution throughout the network, and directly process HSI patches. Extensive experiments on four hyperspectral benchmark datasets reveal MixerCA's clear advantages over several competing algorithms, including 2D-CNN, 3D-CNN, Tri-CNN, HybridSN, ViT, and Swin Transformer. The source code is publicly available at https://github.com/mqalkhatib/MixerCA.

Mohammed Q. Alkhatib, Ali Jamali

aCollege of Engineering and IT, University of Dubai, Dubai, 14143, UAE · bDepartment of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Dr, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada

Hyperspectral Imaging Efficient Attention Convolutional Neural Networks Hyperspectral Image Classification

Apr 28, 2026

A Light Weight Multi-Features-View Convolution Neural Network For Plant Disease Identification

Agriculture is a key sector of the economies of developing countries. It serves as a primary source of income and employment for rural populations. However, each year, a large portion of crops is wasted because of pests and diseases. Well-timed prediction of plant diseases is crucial to sustainable, high-quality agricultural production. Detection of plant diseases through conventional methods is both labour-intensive and time-consuming. Researchers have developed image classification based automated techniques for this purpose. Most accurate methods are based on deep convolutional neural networks, which are computationally intensive, with many layers and millions of trainable parameters. In resource-constrained settings, especially in rural areas, it is difficult to deploy deep convolutional neural network models for efficient plant disease identification. To address these issues, an efficient and light-weight Multi-View Convolutional Neural Network is proposed. These additional features aid the proposed model to identify the plant diseases accurately and efficiently with less number of parameters. The proposed model is tested on a benchmark Plantvillage dataset and achieves an improvement of

2.9\%

in classification accuracy compared to the baseline convolutional neural network model, which was trained only on Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) plant images. Compared with state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural network models, the proposed model is less computationally expensive and achieves comparable accuracy for plant disease identification on the PlantVillage dataset.

Muhammad Kaleem Ullah Khan

COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan

Efficient Neural Network Inference Plant Disease Classification Multi-View Learning Convolutional Neural Networks Lightweight CNNs

Apr 28, 2026

PPG-Based Affect Recognition with Long-Range Deep Models: A Measurement-Driven Comparison of CNN, Transformer, and Mamba Architectures

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is increasingly used in wearable affective computing due to its low cost and ease of integration into consumer devices. Recent advances in deep learning have introduced long-range sequence models, such as Transformers, and state-space models, like Mamba, which have demonstrated strong performance on natural language and general time-series tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these architectures offer tangible benefits over widely used Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTMs) for PPG-based affect recognition, given that datasets are typically small and noisy. This work presents a measurement-driven comparison of four deep learning architectures, CNN, CNN-LSTM hybrid, Transformers, and Mamba, for classifying arousal, valence, and relaxation states from wrist-based PPG signals. All models are evaluated under a subject-independent 5-fold cross-validation protocol using identical preprocessing, segmentation, and training pipelines. Our results show that the Transformer and Mamba models achieve performance comparable to that of a CNN baseline, but do not consistently outperform it across all tasks. CNNs remain the most effective overall, providing the highest accuracy with the smallest model size, whereas Transformers have a better balance of F1 scores for Arousal and Relaxation. The study provides the first evaluation of Transformer and Mamba models for PPG-based affect recognition, offering practical guidance on model selection for wearable affective monitoring systems.

Karim Alghoul, Hussein Al Osman, Abdulmotaleb El Saddik

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science University of Ottawa Ottawa, Canada

Selective SSMs Recurrent Neural Networks Convolutional Neural Networks Time Series Transformers Affective Computing

Apr 28, 2026

Towards interpretable AI with quantum annealing feature selection

Deep learning models are used in critical applications, in which mistakes can have serious consequences. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how and why models generate predictions. This understanding provides useful information to check whether the model is learning the right patterns, detect biases in the data, improve model design, and build systems that can be trusted. This work proposes a new method for interpreting Convolutional Neural Networks in image classification tasks. The approach works by selecting the most representative feature maps that contribute to each prediction. To solve this combinatorial problem, we encode it into a quantum constrained optimization problem and propose to solve it using quantum annealing. We evaluate our method against the state-of-the-art explainable AI techniques, specifically GradCAM and GradCAM++, and observe an improved class disentanglement, i.e. the model's decision boundaries become more distinct and its reasoning more transparent. This demonstrates that our approach enhances the quality of explanations, making it easier to understand which features the model relies on for specific predictions. In addition, we study the computational behavior of the quantum annealing algorithm. Specifically, we analyze the minimum energy gap of the system during computation and the probability that the algorithm finds the correct solution. These analyses provide theoretical insight into why the method works effectively in practice.

Francesco Aldo Venturelli, Emanuele Costa, Sikha O K +3

1BCN Medtech, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain · 2Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) · 3Departament de F´ısica Qu`antica i Astrof´ısica, Facultat de F´ısica, Universitat de Barcelona, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain +2

Quantum Annealing Neural Network Interpretability Convolutional Neural Networks Feature Selection Image Classification

Apr 28, 2026

Image Classification via Random Dilated Convolution with Multi-Branch Feature Extraction and Context Excitation

Image classification remains a fundamental yet challenging task in computer vision, particularly when fine-grained feature extraction and background noise suppression are required simultaneously. Conventional convolutional neural networks, despite their remarkable success in hierarchical feature learning, often struggle with capturing multi-scale contextual information and are susceptible to overfitting when confronted with noisy or irrelevant image regions. In this paper, we propose RDCNet (Image Classification Network with Random Dilated Convolution), a novel architecture built upon ResNet-34 that integrates three synergistic innovations to address these limitations: (1) a Multi-Branch Random Dilated Convolution (MRDC) module that employs parallel branches with varying dilation rates combined with a stochastic masking mechanism to capture fine-grained features across multiple scales while enhancing robustness against noise and overfitting; (2) a Fine-Grained Feature Enhancement (FGFE) module embedded within MRDC that bridges global contextual information with local feature representations through adaptive pooling and bilinear interpolation, thereby amplifying sensitivity to subtle visual patterns; and (3) a Context Excitation (CE) module that leverages softmax-based spatial attention and channel recalibration to dynamically emphasize task-relevant features while suppressing background interference. Extensive experiments conducted on five benchmark datasets -- CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, SVHN, Imagenette, and Imagewoof -- demonstrate that RDCNet consistently achieves state-of-the-art classification accuracy, outperforming the second-best competing methods by margins of 0.02%, 1.12%, 0.18%, 4.73%, and 3.56%, respectively, thereby validating the effectiveness and generalizability of the proposed approach across diverse visual recognition scenarios.

Wentao Jiang, Yuanchan Xu, Heng Yuan

Sichuan University

Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Convolutional Neural Networks Attention Mechanisms Image Classification

Apr 28, 2026

When Less Is More: Simplicity Beats Complexity for Physics-Constrained InSAR Phase Unwrapping

Operational phase unwrapping is the primary computational bottleneck in InSAR-based volcanic and seismic monitoring. We challenge the industry trend of adopting high-complexity computer vision architectures, such as attention mechanisms, without validating their suitability for physics-constrained geophysical regression. We present the first large-scale architectural ablation study on a global LiCSAR benchmark (20 frames, 39,724 patches, 651M pixels). Our results reveal a significant "complexity penalty": a vanilla U-Net (7.76M parameters) achieves

R^2=0.834

and RMSE

= 1.01

cm, outperforming 11.37M-parameter attention-based models by 34% in

R^2

and 51% in RMSE. Power Spectral Density (PSD) analysis provides the physical justification: while attention excels at capturing sharp semantic edges in natural images, it injects unphysical high-frequency artifacts (

>0.3

cycles/pixel) into geophysical fields, violating the fundamental smoothness constraints of elastic surface deformation. With a 2.92ms inference latency (a

2.5\times

speedup), the vanilla U-Net is the only candidate to comfortably meet the sub-100ms requirement for operational early-warning systems. This work bridges the "publication-to-practice" gap by proving that convolutional locality outperforms modern complexity for smooth-field regression, advocating for physics-informed simplicity in ML4RS. Code available at https://github.com/prabhjotschugh/When-Less-is-More-InSAR-Phase-Unwrapping

Prabhjot Singh, Manmeet Singh

The University of Texas at Austin, USA · RediMinds Inc., USA · Western Kentucky University, USA

U-Net Remote Sensing Physics-Informed ML Convolutional Neural Networks Synthetic Aperture Radar Inverse Problems

Apr 27, 2026

A Functorial Formulation of Neighborhood Aggregating Deep Learning

We provide a mathematical interpretation of convolutional (or message passing) neural networks by using presheaves and copresheaves of the set of continuous functions over a topological space. Based on this interpretation, we formulate a theoretical heuristic which elaborates a number of empirical limitations of these neural networks by using obstructions on such sets of continuous functions over a topological space to be sheaves or copresheaves.

Sun Woo Park, Yun Young Choi, U Jin Choi +1

Message Passing Neural Networks Convolutional Neural Networks Neural Network Expressivity

Apr 27, 2026

DYMAPIA: A Multi-Domain Framework for Detecting AI-based Video Manipulation

AI-generated media are advancing rapidly, raising pressing concerns for content authenticity and digital trust. We introduce DYMAPIA, a multi-domain Deepfake detection framework that fuses spatial, spectral, and temporal cues to capture subtle traces of manipulation in visual data. The system builds dynamic anomaly masks by combining evidence from Fourier spectra, local texture descriptors, edge irregularities, and optical flow consistency, which highlight tampered regions with fine spatial accuracy. These masks guide DistXCNet, a lightweight classifier distilled from Xception and optimized with depthwise separable convolutions for fast, region-focused classification. This joint design achieves state-of-the-art results, with accuracy and F1-scores exceeding 99% on FF++, Celeb-DF, and VDFD benchmarks, while keeping the model compact enough for real-time use. Beyond outperforming existing full-frame and multidomain detectors, DYMAPIA demonstrates deployment readiness for time-critical forensic tasks, including media verification, misinformation defense, and secure content filtering.

Md Shohel Rana, Andrew H. Sung

School of Computing Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA 30460, USA · School of Computing Sciences & Computer Engineering The University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406, USA

Digital Image Forensics Deepfake Detection Convolutional Neural Networks

Apr 27, 2026

Graph-augmented Segmentation of Complex Shapes in Laser Powder bed Fusion for Enhanced In Situ Inspection

The technological maturity of in situ inspection and monitoring methods in additive manufacturing is steadily increasing, enabling more efficient and practical qualification procedures. In this context, image segmentation of powder bed images in Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) has been investigated by various authors, leveraging both edge detection and machine learning approaches to identify deviations from nominal geometry. Despite these developments, several challenges remain, including the sensitivity of segmentation performance to industrial illumination conditions and layer-to-layer variability in pixel intensity patterns. The study addresses these limitations by proposing a graph-augmented segmentation approach. The underlying principle consists of preserving the geometrical information at a global level rather than at pixel-wise level, modeling dependencies and relational information among spatial regions with a Graph Neural Network bottleneck embedded into a U-Net architecture. This allows enhancing the consistency and accuracy of the geometry reconstruction in the presence of spatial and layer-wise photometric variability systematically faced in real data. The method is evaluated against benchmark techniques for the in situ reconstruction of lattice structures produced by L-PBF, demonstrating its potential as a scalable solution for robust in situ inspection and geometric verification in industrial environments.

Stefano Raimondo, Matteo Bugatti, Marco Grasso

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via La Masa 1, 20156 Milan, Italy

Graph Neural Networks U-Net Industrial Inspection Convolutional Neural Networks Additive Manufacturing

Apr 27, 2026

Selective Attention-Based Network for Robust Infrared Small Target Detection

Infrared small target detection (IRSTD) plays a pivotal role in a broad spectrum of mission-critical applications, including maritime surveillance, military search and rescue, early warning systems, and precision-guided strikes, all of which demand the precise identification of dim, sub-pixel targets amid highly cluttered infrared backgrounds. Despite significant progress driven by deep learning methods, fundamental challenges persist: infrared small targets occupy extremely limited spatial extents (often only a few pixels), exhibit low signal-to-clutter ratios, and are easily confused with structurally complex backgrounds that frequently induce false alarms. Existing encoder-decoder architectures suffer from two key limitations - an information bottleneck in early convolutional stages that undermines fine-grained target perception, and static skip connections that lack the dynamic adaptability required to discriminate between genuine targets and pseudo-target regions. To address these challenges, we propose SANet, a Selective Attention-based Network built upon the classical U-Net framework and augmented with two novel components: (1) a Dual-path Semantic-aware Module (DSM) that integrates standard convolutions for local spatial detail preservation with pinwheel-shaped convolutions for expanded, direction-sensitive receptive fields, followed by a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) for fine-grained spatial-channel feature recalibration; and (2) a Selective Attention Fusion Module (SAFM) that replaces conventional static skip connections with a spatially adaptive, learnable weighting mechanism to perform context-aware, cross-scale feature fusion.

Yingming Zhang, Wuqi Su, Qing Xiao +1

School of Software and Internet of Things Engineering, Zhejiang Gongshang University · School of Computer Science and Technology, Tiangong University

Infrared Small Target Detection Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Convolutional Neural Networks

Apr 26, 2026

Keyword spotting using convolutional neural network for speech recognition in Hindi

In this study, we investigate the application of keyword spotting (KWS) in the domain of Hindi speech recognition, utilizing a dataset comprising 40,000 audio samples. With a sampling rate of 44 kHz and an average duration of 1.9 seconds per sample, we focus on developing an efficient on-device KWS system tailored for user-specific queries. Leveraging Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for classification, we employ feature engineering techniques to convert raw audio recordings into Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) as an input for our network. Our experiments encompass various CNN architectures, exploring their efficacy in identifying predefined keywords within the continuous speech stream. Our CNN-based approach achieves a commendable accuracy rate of 91.79% through rigorous evaluation, demonstrating promising performance while ensuring computational efficiency and user-specific customization in Hindi speech recognition.

Saru Bharti, Pushparaj Mani Pathak

iHub DivyaSampark Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee Roorkee, India · Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee Roorkee, India

Keyword Spotting Speech Processing Automatic Speech Recognition Convolutional Neural Networks

Apr 26, 2026

Empirical Ablation and Ensemble Optimization of a Convolutional Neural Network for CIFAR-10 Classification

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) remain a central approach in image classification, but their performance depends strongly on architectural and training choices. This paper presents an empirical ablation-based study of CNN optimization for the CIFAR-10 benchmark. The study evaluates 17 progressive modifications involving training duration, learning-rate scheduling, dropout configuration, pooling strategy, network depth, filter arrangement, and dense-layer design. The goal is to identify which changes improve generalization and which increase complexity without improving performance. The baseline model achieved 79.5% test accuracy. Extending training duration improved performance steadily, whereas several structural redesigns reduced accuracy despite greater architectural variation. Based on the strongest individual configurations, a weighted ensemble was constructed, achieving 86.38% accuracy in the reduced-data setting and 89.23% when trained using the full CIFAR-10 dataset. These results suggest that performance gains in CNN-based classification depend less on indiscriminate increases in depth or parameter count than on careful empirical selection of training and architectural modifications. The study therefore highlights the practical value of ablation-oriented optimization and ensemble learning for small-image classification.

Naser Khatti Dizabadi

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Tulsa, 800 S. Tucker Drive, Tulsa, 74104, OK, USA

Neural Network Optimization Convolutional Neural Networks Image Classification

Apr 26, 2026

VDLF-Net: Variational Feature Fusion for Adaptive and Few-Shot Visual Learning

This paper introduces VDLF-Net, which attaches a compact VAE to a multi-scale CNN backbone. Latent vectors and softmax-gate support the backbone feature maps, while

\ell_2

-normalized embeddings from the gated maps contribute toward supervised classification or episodic few-shot prediction. Under standard CIFAR-100 and Mini-ImageNet protocols, VDLF-Net demonstrates an improved performance over ResNet-50 Enhanced, VGG-16, Prototypical Networks, and Matching Networks. Extensive ablations show that removing the fine-resolution scale has the greatest impact on VDLF-Net's performance. At the same time, KL and reconstruction at the chosen

α

pose a minor performance reduction, demonstrating that performance gains over classical episodic baselines mainly originate from the full VDLF-Net architecture and training strategy.

Jiawei Yan

Department of Statistics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China.

Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Convolutional Neural Networks Few-Shot Image Classification

Apr 25, 2026

Learn&Drop: Fast Learning of CNNs based on Layer Dropping

This paper proposes a new method to improve the training efficiency of deep convolutional neural networks. During training, the method evaluates scores to measure how much each layer's parameters change and whether the layer will continue learning or not. Based on these scores, the network is scaled down such that the number of parameters to be learned is reduced, yielding a speed up in training. Unlike state-of-the-art methods that try to compress the network to be used in the inference phase or to limit the number of operations performed in the backpropagation phase, the proposed method is novel in that it focuses on reducing the number of operations performed by the network in the forward propagation during training. The proposed training strategy has been validated on two widely used architecture families: VGG and ResNet. Experiments on MNIST, CIFAR-10 and Imagenette show that, with the proposed method, the training time of the models is more than halved without significantly impacting accuracy. The FLOPs reduction in the forward propagation during training ranges from 17.83% for VGG-11 to 83.74% for ResNet-152. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique in speeding up learning of CNNs. The technique will be especially useful in applications where fine-tuning or online training of convolutional models is required, for instance because data arrive sequentially.

Giorgio Cruciata, Luca Cruciata, Liliana Lo Presti +2

Engineering Department, University of Palermo, V.le delle Scienze, Ed. 6, Palermo, 90128, Italy. · Computer Vision Lab, Delft University of Technology, Van Mourik Broekmanweg 6,2026 Delft, 2628 XE, The Netherlands.

Deep Learning Optimization Convolutional Neural Networks Neural Network Pruning

Apr 25, 2026

Hierarchical Spatio-Channel Clustering for Efficient Model Compression in Medical Image Analysis

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have become increasingly difficult to deploy in resource-constrained environments due to their large memory and computational requirements. Although low-rank compression methods can reduce this burden, most existing approaches compress spatial and channel redundancy independently and therefore do not fully exploit the localised structure within convolutional feature maps. This paper proposes a hierarchical spatio-channel low-rank compression framework for CNNs that exploits redundancy across spatial regions and channel activations. Unlike conventional methods, which apply a uniform decomposition across an entire layer, the proposed approach first partitions feature maps into spatial regions, then groups channels according to their co-activation patterns within each region, and finally applies rank-adaptive SVD to each resulting spatio-channel cluster. The method is evaluated on an AlexNet-based brain tumour MRI classification model and compared with Global SVD and Tucker decomposition under

3\times

and

6\times

compression budgets. Our method outperforms both baselines, reducing FLOPs from

8.21\,\mathrm{G}

to

1.55\,\mathrm{G}

(

81.1\%

reduction), achieving a

1.38\times

inference speed-up, and increasing classification accuracy from

87.76\%

to

89.80\%

. The method also improves the macro

F_1

-score and performance on challenging classes such as meningioma. A hyper-parameter trade-off analysis demonstrates that the framework provides Pareto-optimal configurations, enabling control over the balance between compression and predictive performance. Moderate clustering with adaptive rank selection yields strong results. Bootstrap standard errors are reported for all classification metrics.

Sisipho Hamlomo, Marcellin Atemkeng, Habte Tadesse Likassa +5

Department of Mathematics, Rhodes University, Makhanda 6140, South Africa · Department of Statistics, Rhodes University, Makhanda 6140, South Africa · National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa +8

Low-Rank Compression Low-Rank Approximation Convolutional Neural Networks Neural Network Compression

Apr 25, 2026

Physics-Informed Temporal U-Net for High-Fidelity Fluid Interpolation

Reconstructing high-fidelity fluid dynamics from sparse temporal observations is quite challenging, mainly due to the chaotic and non-linear nature of fluid transport. Standard deep learning-based interpolation methods often tend to regress to the mean, which results in spatial blurring and temporal strobing, especially noticeable around the observed anchor frames where transitions become discontinuous. In this work, we propose a novel Temporal U-Net architecture that integrates a VGG-based perceptual loss along with a Physics-Informed Bridge to overcome these issues. By introducing time-weighted feature blending and enforcing a parabolic boundary condition defined by t(1 - t), the model ensures smooth transitions while also maintaining perfect consistency at the endpoints. Experimental results on multi-channel RGB fluid data show that our method clearly outperforms standard models, both in terms of structural fidelity and texture preservation. In particular, the model achieves a Mean Absolute Error of 0.015, compared to 0.085 for a standard L1 baseline. Further Spatial Power Spectral Density (PSD) analysis reveals that the model is able to retain high-frequency turbulent details that are usually lost in deterministic reconstructions.

Eshwar R. A., Nevin Mathew Thomas, Nehal G +1

Department of Computer Science Engineering, PES University - Electronic City Campus, Bangalore 560100, India.

U-Net Video Frame Interpolation Physics-Informed ML Convolutional Neural Networks Computational Fluid Dynamics

Apr 25, 2026

KAConvNet: Kolmogorov-Arnold Convolutional Networks for Vision Recognition

The Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been the dominant and effective approach for general computer vision tasks. Recently, Kolmogorov-Arnold neural networks (KANs), based on the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem, have shown potential to replace Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) in deep learning. KANs, which use learnable nonlinear activations on edges and simple summation on nodes, offer fewer parameters and greater explainability compared to MLPs. However, there has been limited exploration of integrating the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem with convolutional methods for computer vision tasks. Existing attempts have merely replaced learnable activation functions with weights, undermining KANs' theoretical foundation and limiting their potential effectiveness. Additionally, the B-spline curves used in KANs suffer from computational inefficiency and a tendency to overfit. In this paper, we propose a novel Kolmogorov-Arnold Convolutional Layer that deeply integrates the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem with convolution. This layer provides stronger method interpretability because it is based on established mathematical theorems and its design has theoretical alignment. Building on the Kolmogorov-Arnold Convolutional Layer, we design an efficient network architecture called KAConvNet, which outperforms existing methods combining KAN and convolution, and achieves competitive performance compared to mainstream ViTs and CNNs. We believe that our work offers valuable insight into the field of artificial intelligence and will inspire the development of more innovative CNNs in the 2020s. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/UnicomAI/KAConvNet.

Zhaoxiang Liu, Zhicheng Ma, Kaikai Zhao +2

Unicom Data Intelligence, China Unicom, Beijing, China

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks Convolutional Neural Networks