cv-multi-scale-patch-training-pyramid

Overview

Aerial-imagery count datasets suffer from inter-image scale drift — different flights, altitudes, and zoom levels produce the same objects at different pixel sizes. Random rescale augmentation helps but is unprincipled; the deterministic fix is a geometric scale pyramid: for each training image, resize at [1.0, 0.9, 0.81, 0.729, 0.656], rebuild the patch/label grid at each scale, tile, and pool everything into one training set. The CNN then sees the same object instances at every reasonable size and learns a size-invariant mapping. Used alongside patch-grid count regression to win on NOAA Steller Sea Lion.

Quick Start

import cv2
import numpy as np

PATCH = 300
SCALES = [0.9 ** k for k in range(5)]          # 1.0, 0.9, 0.81, 0.729, 0.656

patches, labels = [], []
for r in SCALES:
    img_r = cv2.resize(img, None, fx=r, fy=r)
    grid = build_count_grid(points, scale=r, patch=PATCH, n_classes=n_classes)
    h, w = img_r.shape[:2]
    for i in range(w // PATCH):
        for j in range(h // PATCH):
            y = grid[i, j]
            x = img_r[j*PATCH:(j+1)*PATCH, i*PATCH:(i+1)*PATCH]
            if y.sum() > 0 or np.random.rand() < 0.25:   # 1:3 pos:neg
                patches.append(x); labels.append(y)

Workflow

1. Define a geometric scale pyramid (e.g. 0.9^k for k ∈ [0..4]) covering the expected size range
2. For each scale, resize the image and rebuild the point-to-grid mapping at the new resolution
3. Tile the scaled image into PATCH × PATCH patches; keep every positive and ~25% of negatives
4. Pool all scales into a single (patches, labels) training set and shuffle
5. Train one count-regression CNN on the pooled set — no separate per-scale model

Key Decisions

• Geometric, not linear scaling: 0.9^k gives perceptually uniform steps; linear steps crowd the small end.
• Fix patch pixel size across scales: the CNN sees a constant 300×300 input geometry — scale is absorbed into how many objects fit in a patch, not how big they look to the conv filters.
• Rebuild the grid per scale: points get remapped, so the label tensor is different at every scale. Don't reuse the base-scale grid.
• Enforce pos:neg ratio per scale: rare classes are rarer at the small end; without ratio control they get drowned.
• Fewer scales, more data: 5 scales × full dataset usually beats 10 scales × half dataset in practice.

References

• Use keras to count sea lions