ValUES: A Framework for Systematic Validation of Uncertainty Estimation in Semantic Segmentation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kahl, Kim-Celine, Lüth, Carsten T., Zenk, Maximilian, Maier-Hein, Klaus, Jaeger, Paul F.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909188357095424
author Kahl, Kim-Celine
Lüth, Carsten T.
Zenk, Maximilian
Maier-Hein, Klaus
Jaeger, Paul F.
author_facet Kahl, Kim-Celine
Lüth, Carsten T.
Zenk, Maximilian
Maier-Hein, Klaus
Jaeger, Paul F.
contents Uncertainty estimation is an essential and heavily-studied component for the reliable application of semantic segmentation methods. While various studies exist claiming methodological advances on the one hand, and successful application on the other hand, the field is currently hampered by a gap between theory and practice leaving fundamental questions unanswered: Can data-related and model-related uncertainty really be separated in practice? Which components of an uncertainty method are essential for real-world performance? Which uncertainty method works well for which application? In this work, we link this research gap to a lack of systematic and comprehensive evaluation of uncertainty methods. Specifically, we identify three key pitfalls in current literature and present an evaluation framework that bridges the research gap by providing 1) a controlled environment for studying data ambiguities as well as distribution shifts, 2) systematic ablations of relevant method components, and 3) test-beds for the five predominant uncertainty applications: OoD-detection, active learning, failure detection, calibration, and ambiguity modeling. Empirical results on simulated as well as real-world data demonstrate how the proposed framework is able to answer the predominant questions in the field revealing for instance that 1) separation of uncertainty types works on simulated data but does not necessarily translate to real-world data, 2) aggregation of scores is a crucial but currently neglected component of uncertainty methods, 3) While ensembles are performing most robustly across the different downstream tasks and settings, test-time augmentation often constitutes a light-weight alternative. Code is at: https://github.com/IML-DKFZ/values
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_08501
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ValUES: A Framework for Systematic Validation of Uncertainty Estimation in Semantic Segmentation
Kahl, Kim-Celine
Lüth, Carsten T.
Zenk, Maximilian
Maier-Hein, Klaus
Jaeger, Paul F.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Uncertainty estimation is an essential and heavily-studied component for the reliable application of semantic segmentation methods. While various studies exist claiming methodological advances on the one hand, and successful application on the other hand, the field is currently hampered by a gap between theory and practice leaving fundamental questions unanswered: Can data-related and model-related uncertainty really be separated in practice? Which components of an uncertainty method are essential for real-world performance? Which uncertainty method works well for which application? In this work, we link this research gap to a lack of systematic and comprehensive evaluation of uncertainty methods. Specifically, we identify three key pitfalls in current literature and present an evaluation framework that bridges the research gap by providing 1) a controlled environment for studying data ambiguities as well as distribution shifts, 2) systematic ablations of relevant method components, and 3) test-beds for the five predominant uncertainty applications: OoD-detection, active learning, failure detection, calibration, and ambiguity modeling. Empirical results on simulated as well as real-world data demonstrate how the proposed framework is able to answer the predominant questions in the field revealing for instance that 1) separation of uncertainty types works on simulated data but does not necessarily translate to real-world data, 2) aggregation of scores is a crucial but currently neglected component of uncertainty methods, 3) While ensembles are performing most robustly across the different downstream tasks and settings, test-time augmentation often constitutes a light-weight alternative. Code is at: https://github.com/IML-DKFZ/values
title ValUES: A Framework for Systematic Validation of Uncertainty Estimation in Semantic Segmentation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.08501