MSPCaps: A Multi-Scale Patchify Capsule Network with Cross-Agreement Routing for Visual Recognition

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Yudong, Han, Yueju, Sun, Rui, Ren, Jinke
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hu, Yudong
Han, Yueju
Sun, Rui
Ren, Jinke
author_facet Hu, Yudong
Han, Yueju
Sun, Rui
Ren, Jinke
contents Capsule Network (CapsNet) has demonstrated significant potential in visual recognition by capturing spatial relationships and part-whole hierarchies for learning equivariant feature representations. However, existing CapsNet and variants often rely on a single high-level feature map, overlooking the rich complementary information from multi-scale features. Furthermore, conventional feature fusion strategies (e.g., addition and concatenation) struggle to reconcile multi-scale feature discrepancies, leading to suboptimal classification performance. To address these limitations, we propose the Multi-Scale Patchify Capsule Network (MSPCaps), a novel architecture that integrates multi-scale feature learning and efficient capsule routing. Specifically, MSPCaps consists of three key components: a Multi-Scale ResNet Backbone (MSRB), a Patchify Capsule Layer (PatchifyCaps), and Cross-Agreement Routing (CAR) blocks. First, the MSRB extracts diverse multi-scale feature representations from input images, preserving both fine-grained details and global contextual information. Second, the PatchifyCaps partitions these multi-scale features into primary capsules using a uniform patch size, equipping the model with the ability to learn from diverse receptive fields. Finally, the CAR block adaptively routes the multi-scale capsules by identifying cross-scale prediction pairs with maximum agreement. Unlike the simple concatenation of multiple self-routing blocks, CAR ensures that only the most coherent capsules contribute to the final voting. Our proposed MSPCaps achieves remarkable scalability and superior robustness, consistently surpassing multiple baseline methods in terms of classification accuracy, with configurations ranging from a highly efficient Tiny model (344.3K parameters) to a powerful Large model (10.9M parameters), highlighting its potential in advancing feature representation learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_16922
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MSPCaps: A Multi-Scale Patchify Capsule Network with Cross-Agreement Routing for Visual Recognition
Hu, Yudong
Han, Yueju
Sun, Rui
Ren, Jinke
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
I.2.10; I.4.8; I.5.2
Capsule Network (CapsNet) has demonstrated significant potential in visual recognition by capturing spatial relationships and part-whole hierarchies for learning equivariant feature representations. However, existing CapsNet and variants often rely on a single high-level feature map, overlooking the rich complementary information from multi-scale features. Furthermore, conventional feature fusion strategies (e.g., addition and concatenation) struggle to reconcile multi-scale feature discrepancies, leading to suboptimal classification performance. To address these limitations, we propose the Multi-Scale Patchify Capsule Network (MSPCaps), a novel architecture that integrates multi-scale feature learning and efficient capsule routing. Specifically, MSPCaps consists of three key components: a Multi-Scale ResNet Backbone (MSRB), a Patchify Capsule Layer (PatchifyCaps), and Cross-Agreement Routing (CAR) blocks. First, the MSRB extracts diverse multi-scale feature representations from input images, preserving both fine-grained details and global contextual information. Second, the PatchifyCaps partitions these multi-scale features into primary capsules using a uniform patch size, equipping the model with the ability to learn from diverse receptive fields. Finally, the CAR block adaptively routes the multi-scale capsules by identifying cross-scale prediction pairs with maximum agreement. Unlike the simple concatenation of multiple self-routing blocks, CAR ensures that only the most coherent capsules contribute to the final voting. Our proposed MSPCaps achieves remarkable scalability and superior robustness, consistently surpassing multiple baseline methods in terms of classification accuracy, with configurations ranging from a highly efficient Tiny model (344.3K parameters) to a powerful Large model (10.9M parameters), highlighting its potential in advancing feature representation learning.
title MSPCaps: A Multi-Scale Patchify Capsule Network with Cross-Agreement Routing for Visual Recognition
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
I.2.10; I.4.8; I.5.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16922