[Paper]   [Citation]

Abstract: Convolutional Neural Network is one of the famous members of the deep learning family of neural network architectures, which is used for many purposes, including image classification. In spite of the wide adoption, such networks are known to be highly tuned to the training data (samples representing a particular problem), and they are poorly reusable to address new problems. One way to change this would be, in addition to trainable weights, to apply trainable parameters of the mathematical functions, which simulate various neural computations within such networks. In this way, we may distinguish between the narrowly focused task-specific parameters (weights) and more generic capability-specific parameters. In this paper, we suggest a couple of flexible mathematical functions (Generalized Lehmer Mean and Generalized Power Mean) with trainable parameters to replace some fixed operations (such as ordinary arithmetic mean or simple weighted aggregation), which are traditionally used within various components of a convolutional neural network architecture. We named the overall architecture with such an update as a hyper-flexible convolutional neural network. We provide mathematical justification of various components of such architecture and experimentally show that it performs better than the traditional one, including better robustness regarding the adversarial perturbations of testing data.

New types of flexible pooling based on Generalized Lehmer Mean (GLM) and Generalized Power Mean (GPM). Other Lehmer-based pooling types can be found in flexnets/nn/pooling.py.

Flexible convolutional layers based on GLM and GPM with adaptive parameters.

Generalized Lehmer Dot Product or Generalized Lehmer Convolution (GLC) and Generalized Power Dot Product or Generalized Power Convolution (GPC) can be found in flexnets/nn/convolution.py.

Generalized ReLU function (GReLU) with extra trainable parameter α and Generalized SoftMax with flexible normalization function (GLSoftMax and GPSoftMax) can be found in flexnets/nn/activation.py.

Generalized Neuron is a new type of artificial neuron with trainable weights and with two additional parameter. Generalized Lehmer Layer (GLL) can be found in flexnets/nn/layers.py.

Requirements:

• Python 3.10.6
• PyTorch 1.12.1
• (optional) pandas 1.4.3
• (optional) pytorch-lightning 1.7.0
• (optional) torchmetrics 0.9.3
• (optional) tqdm 4.64.0

The package is based on PyTorch and composed of five main parts:

• activation
• convolution
• layers
• pooling
• preprocessing

All components can be used both together and separately in any other network.

# Initial values for trainable parameters of GLM
alpha = 2.5
beta = 1.3

# Initial values for trainable parameters of GPM
gamma = 2.3
delta = 0.5

import flexnets.nn as nn

m = nn.pooling.GeneralizedLehmerPool2d(alpha, beta)
input = torch.randn(20, 16, 50, 100)
output = m(input)

import flexnets.nn as nn

m = nn.pooling.GeneralizedPowerMeanPool2d(gamma, delta)
input = torch.randn(20, 16, 50, 100)
output = m(input)

from flexnets.nn.convolution import GeneralizedLehmerConvolution

m = GeneralizedLehmerConvolution(16, 33, (3, 5), stride=(2, 1), padding=(4, 2), dilation=(3, 1), alpha = 1.5, beta = 1.3)
input = torch.randn(20, 16, 50, 100)
output = m(input)

from flexnets.nn.convolution import GeneralizedPowerConvolution

m = GeneralizedPowerConvolution(16, 33, (3, 5), stride=(2, 1), padding=(4, 2), dilation=(3, 1), gamma = 1.5, delta = 1.3)
input = torch.randn(20, 16, 50, 100)
output = m(input)

import flexnets.nn as nn

m = nn.activation.GLSoftMax()
input = torch.randn(2, 3)
output = m(input)

import flexnets.nn as nn

m = nn.activation.GPSoftMax()
input = torch.randn(2, 3)
output = m(input)

import flexnets.nn as nn

m = nn.activation.GReLU()
input = torch.randn(2)
output = m(input)

import flexnets.nn as nn

m = nn.layers.GeneralizedLehmerLayer(3, 50, alpha = 1.8, beta = 1.3)
input = torch.randn(20, 16, 50, 100)
output = m(input)

If you use the results presented in this paper or the code from the repository, please cite the relevant paper.

@article{TERZIYAN2022,
  title = {Hyper-flexible Convolutional Neural Networks based on Generalized Lehmer and Power Means},
  journal = {Neural Networks},
  year = {2022},
  issn = {0893-6080},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2022.08.017},
  url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0893608022003173},
  author = {Vagan Terziyan and Diana Malyk and Mariia Golovianko and Vladyslav Branytskyi},
  keywords = {Convolutional Neural Network, Generalization, Flexibility, Adversarial robustness, Pooling, Convolution, Activation function, Lehmer Mean, Power Mean},
  abstract = {Convolutional Neural Network is one of the famous members of the deep learning family of neural network architectures, which is used for many purposes, including image classification. In spite of the wide adoption, such networks are known to be highly tuned to the training data (samples representing a particular problem), and they are poorly reusable to address new problems. One way to change this would be, in addition to trainable weights, to apply trainable parameters of the mathematical functions, which simulate various neural computations within such networks. In this way, we may distinguish between the narrowly focused task-specific parameters (weights) and more generic capability-specific parameters. In this paper, we suggest a couple of flexible mathematical functions (Generalized Lehmer Mean and Generalized Power Mean) with trainable parameters to replace some fixed operations (such as ordinary arithmetic mean or simple weighted aggregation), which are traditionally used within various components of a convolutional neural network architecture. We named the overall architecture with such an update as a hyper-flexible convolutional neural network. We provide mathematical justification of various components of such architecture and experimentally show that it performs better than the traditional one, including better robustness regarding the adversarial perturbations of testing data.}
}