We generalise Spatial Transformer Networks (STN) by replacing the parametric transformation of a fixed, regular sampling grid with a deformable, statistical shape model which is itself learnt. We call this a Statistical Transformer Network (StaTN). By training a network containing a StaTN end-to-end for a particular task, the network learns the optimal nonrigid alignment of the input data for the task. Moreover, the statistical shape model is learnt with no direct supervision (such as landmarks) and can be reused for other tasks. Besides training for a specific task, we also show that a StaTN can learn a shape model using generic loss functions. This includes a loss inspired by the minimum description length principle in which an appearance model is also learnt from scratch. In this configuration, our model learns an active appearance model and a means to fit the model from scratch with no supervision at all, even identity labels.
The general problem of alignment has been approached from a learning perspective previously @cite_0 . The specific question of whether CNNs learn a notion of correspondence implicitly has been considered by Long al @cite_22 . More generally, morphable models (models of the warps between samples from an object class in dense correspondence) have been learnt directly from in the wild image data @cite_25 @cite_30 , though note that the process of fitting these models is tackled separately (using handcrafted algorithms).
@cite_0 @cite_30 @cite_25 @cite_22
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We describe a new method of matching statistical models of appearance to images. A set of model parameters control modes of shape and gray-level variation learned from a training set. We construct an efficient iterative matching algorithm by learning the relationship between perturbations in the model parameters and the induced image errors. 3D morphable models are low-dimensional parameterizations of 3D object classes which provide a powerful means of associating 3D geometry to 2D images. However, morphable models are currently generated from 3D scans, so for general object classes such as animals they are economically and practically infeasible. We show that, given a small amount of user interaction (little more than that required to build a conventional morphable model), there is enough information in a collection of 2D pictures of certain object classes to generate a full 3D morphable model, even in the absence of surface texture. The key restriction is that the object class should not be strongly articulated, and that a very rough rigid model should be provided as an initial estimate of the “mean shape.” The model representation is a linear combination of subdivision surfaces, which we fit to image silhouettes and any identifiable key points using a novel combined continuous-discrete optimization strategy. Results are demonstrated on several natural object classes, and show that models of rather high quality can be obtained from this limited information. Convolutional neural nets (convnets) trained from massive labeled datasets have substantially improved the state-of-the-art in image classification and object detection. However, visual understanding requires establishing correspondence on a finer level than object category. Given their large pooling regions and training from whole-image labels, it is not clear that convnets derive their success from an accurate correspondence model which could be used for precise localization. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of convnet activation features for tasks requiring correspondence. We present evidence that convnet features localize at a much finer scale than their receptive field sizes, that they can be used to perform intraclass alignment as well as conventional hand-engineered features, and that they outperform conventional features in keypoint prediction on objects from PASCAL VOC 2011.