Improving Deep Learning by Incorporating Semi-automatic Moving Object Annotation and Filtering for Vision-based Vehicle Detection*

Deep learning has undergone tremendous advancements in computer vision studies. The training of deep learning neural networks depends on a considerable amount of ground truth datasets. However, labeling ground truth data is a labor-intensive task, particularly for large-volume video analytics applications such as video surveillance and vehicles detection for autonomous driving. This paper presents a rapid and accurate method for associative searching in big image data obtained from security monitoring systems. We developed a semi-automatic moving object annotation method for improving deep learning models. The proposed method comprises three stages, namely automatic foreground object extraction, object annotation in subsequent video frames, and dataset construction using human-in-the-loop quick selection. Furthermore, the proposed method expedites dataset collection and ground truth annotation processes. In contrast to data augmentation and data generative models, the proposed method produces a large amount of real data, which may facilitate training results and avoid adverse effects engendered by artifactual data. We applied the constructed annotation dataset to train a deep learning you-only-look-once (YOLO) model to perform vehicle detection on street intersection surveillance videos. Experimental results demonstrated that the accurate detection performance was improved from a mean average precision (mAP) of 83.99 to 88.03.