Deep Convolutional Network Based on Pyramid Architecture

Deep convolutional network demonstrates that the classification accuracy can be remarkably improved by increasing the number of network layers, however, increases the accuracy by 1% of costs nearly doubling the number of layers. Meanwhile, gradient dispersion will occur in the training process, which leads to performance degradation. In order to solve the problem of training difficulty with the increased number of layers, we focus on network architecture and propose a deep convolutional network based on the pyramid structure. In the network architecture, as the number of layers increased, the feature map dimensions (i.e., the number of channels) are gradually increased at each layer to distribute the burden concentrated at locations of structural units affected by downsampling, such that all units are equally distributed. By exploring the sequence between the stacked elements inside the structural unit, we design a pyramidal building block, as its shape gradually widens from the top downwards, which is called the deep pyramid convolutional network (DPCNet). Experimental results on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 datasets have shown that DPCNet has the superior generalization capability and can effectively improve the image classification accuracy.