Entropy-Based Non-Invasive Reliability Monitoring of Convolutional Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nazeri, Amirhossein, Hafez, Wael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Nazeri, Amirhossein
Hafez, Wael
author_facet Nazeri, Amirhossein
Hafez, Wael
contents Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become the foundation of modern computer vision, achieving unprecedented accuracy across diverse image recognition tasks. While these networks excel on in-distribution data, they remain vulnerable to adversarial perturbations imperceptible input modifications that cause misclassification with high confidence. However, existing detection methods either require expensive retraining, modify network architecture, or degrade performance on clean inputs. Here we show that adversarial perturbations create immediate, detectable entropy signatures in CNN activations that can be monitored without any model modification. Using parallel entropy monitoring on VGG-16, we demonstrate that adversarial inputs consistently shift activation entropy by 7% in early convolutional layers, enabling 90% detection accuracy with false positives and false negative rates below 20%. The complete separation between clean and adversarial entropy distributions reveals that CNNs inherently encode distribution shifts in their activation patterns. This work establishes that CNN reliability can be assessed through activation entropy alone, enabling practical deployment of self-diagnostic vision systems that detect adversarial inputs in real-time without compromising original model performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_21715
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Entropy-Based Non-Invasive Reliability Monitoring of Convolutional Neural Networks
Nazeri, Amirhossein
Hafez, Wael
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Information Theory
Image and Video Processing
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become the foundation of modern computer vision, achieving unprecedented accuracy across diverse image recognition tasks. While these networks excel on in-distribution data, they remain vulnerable to adversarial perturbations imperceptible input modifications that cause misclassification with high confidence. However, existing detection methods either require expensive retraining, modify network architecture, or degrade performance on clean inputs. Here we show that adversarial perturbations create immediate, detectable entropy signatures in CNN activations that can be monitored without any model modification. Using parallel entropy monitoring on VGG-16, we demonstrate that adversarial inputs consistently shift activation entropy by 7% in early convolutional layers, enabling 90% detection accuracy with false positives and false negative rates below 20%. The complete separation between clean and adversarial entropy distributions reveals that CNNs inherently encode distribution shifts in their activation patterns. This work establishes that CNN reliability can be assessed through activation entropy alone, enabling practical deployment of self-diagnostic vision systems that detect adversarial inputs in real-time without compromising original model performance.
title Entropy-Based Non-Invasive Reliability Monitoring of Convolutional Neural Networks
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Information Theory
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21715