How Does Semantic Segmentation Work – Beginners Guide

How Does Semantic Segmentation Work

Computer vision helps firms to perform complicated tasks such as picture classification, restoration, and object recognition by allowing computers to derive meaning from images and movies. Semantic segmentation is a computer vision technique that aids computers in determining what items are present in a scene.

Semantic Segmentation? What is it?

Semantic segmentation is a method of picture segmentation that allocates each pixel in an image to a specific entity. It only works with pixels and assigns a class name to each pixel in a picture, such as a dog, person, or cat.

What Makes Semantic Segmentation Different From Instance Segmentation?

Both of these approaches are kinds of segmentation. However:

Multiple items belonging to the same class are treated as a single entity by semantic segmentation. For example, it seeks to categorize all dogs in a photo as “Dog.”

Multiple instances of the same class are distinguished via instance segmentation. Each dog is given a different label, such as “Dog 1,” “Dog 2,” etc.

 Let’s discuss these a bit more in detail.

Semantic Segmentation

The objective of semantic segmentation is to assign a class to each pixel in a given image.

It’s important to note that this is not the same as classification. Classification assigns a single class to the entire image, whereas semantic segmentation assigns a class to each individual pixel in the image.

The following are two examples of prominent semantic segmentation applications:

  • Self-driving cars: To navigate via routes, these vehicles rely primarily on segmented images.
  • Google’s Pixel phone has a portrait mode: Instead of using numerous classes, we must categorize each pixel as either foreground or background, and then blur the background portion of the image.



Instance Segmentation

In instance segmentation, different instances of the same class are segregated separately. In other words, the segments are conscious of their context. Different instances of the same class (person) have been given different labels, as shown in the above graphic.

Image Segmentation Algorithms

Image segmentation has long been a difficulty in computer vision. The Watershed algorithm, Image thresholding, K-means clustering, Graph partitioning approaches, and other algorithms have all been created to overcome this problem.

Many deep learning architectures have been developed (such as fully linked networks for image segmentation), but Google’s DeepLab model has produced the best results to date.

What are some of the uses for semantic segmentation?

Medical Imaging: Semantic segmentation in medical imaging aids doctors in extracting relevant information from X-ray scans and other medical pictures.

Semantic segmentation and how does it work?

The fundamental components of a semantic segmentation architecture are an encoder and decoder network.

Image data is fed into the encoder. It prepares image data for the decoder’s use. It analyses picture data to obtain statistical features such as the image’s pixel count. In a subsequent phase, these traits aid in the labeling and location of items. It improves the decoder step’s categorization accuracy.

The encoder’s output is fed into the decoder, which predicts the location and size of each bounding box.

What options are applied for semantic segmentation?

Fully convolutional networks are a type of semantic segmentation architecture. It converts picture pixels into pixel classes using a “fully convolutional” network. FCN is made up of convolution layers, the first of which removes features from the input image.

  • Skip connections: Skip Connections is another term for “shortcut connections.” It primarily focuses on resolving the network’s degradation problem between levels. In an image, a layer denotes the location of items at various levels, whereas a network denotes the interactions between visual data. The output of one layer in the network is used as an input for the next layers using skip connections.
  • U-Net: The architecture is designed in the shape of a U. That’s why it’s known as a U-Net. It is mostly utilized in the segmentation of biomedical images. It is divided into two sections. The contraction path is the initial path (also known as the encoder). It records the image’s context (the relationship between nearby pixels) and saves it for later use by a decoder. The expanding path, often known as a decoder, is the second path. U-main Net’s goal is to produce high-resolution images from low-resolution image inputs.


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