2020 9th M EDITERRANEAN C ONFERENCE ON E MBEDDED C OMPUTING (MECO), 8-11 J UNE 2020, B UDVA , M ONTENEGRO

TensorFlow for Generating Edge Detection Dataset

Boris A. Alpatov Nikita Yu. Shubin Andrey V. Yakovlev
Department of Automation and Department of Automation and Department of Automation and
Information Technologies in control Information Technologies in control Information Technologies in control
Ryazan State Radio Engineering Ryazan State Radio Engineering Ryazan State Radio Engineering
University University University
Ryazan, Russia Ryazan, Russia Ryazan, Russia
aitu@rsreu.ru shubin.kit@ya.ru andrey.yakovlev.98@mail.ru

Abstract—Solving any problem using machine learning requires
datasets. Most datasets are labeled manually for supervised
learning tasks. This paper describes a method for generating
labeled data for edge detection tasks on an image. This eliminates
a number of problems associated with manual data labeling.
relevant for aircraft. In addition, the labeling is manual
[6,7,8,9,10]. There are two problems with it. First, the
representativeness of such a training set is questionable.

TensorFlow, dataset, edge detection, image processing.

I. INTRODUCTION
Object edges in the image are one of the main criteria that
is used to evaluate the shape, size, and other parameters of
almost any object. There are many algorithms and methods for
detecting and extracting object edges on an image. They have
various advantages and disadvantages. It can be divided into
two large groups: local and global. Local edge detection
methods determine the presence of an edge in a given pixel
taking into account its neighborhood. These methods include
all algorithms based on two-dimensional convolution, such as
the Previtt filter, Roberts filter, Kenny filter [1], and so on.
Fig. 1. Image with labels example from Microsoft COCO dataset [6]
However, the quality of binary classification strongly depends
on the threshold you select. Even algorithms that use automatic Manual labels impose serious restrictions on the amount of
threshold selection do not always work well. Also, when the data received. Second, manual labels are ambiguous. The same
signal-to-noise ratio is low, the detected edges contain a image can be marked differently by several experts (Fig. 2). It
number of gaps. It is happening because the information of the is difficult to estimate the correctness of various markups. This
selected pixel neighborhood is not always sufficient for the complicates the introduction of a metric for the accuracy of a
edge detection. particular algorithm and the development of a loss function. As
Global methods are analyzing the image in general. In this a result, many works devoted to detecting edges in an image
case the hypothesis of the presence of an edge of a certain either use controversial metrics or even do not perform
shape with specified parameters on the image [2, 3] is been put comparative analysis at all [2,5].
forward. The global methods are much more resistant to noise
than local methods. However, the hypotheses themselves are
usually quite primitive due to its computational complexity.
These methods are usually used for lines and circles detection.
More complex shapes add new degrees of freedom to the
parametric space.
There are some attempts to use a combination of these two
approaches [4, 5]. However, the search for an optimal solution
Original Image Subject 1
continues.
Usage of artificial neural networks could significantly
improve the quality of the problem being solved. However,
supervised machine learning methods always require an image
dataset with ground truth data. In case of the edge detection
algorithms the dataset must contain the ground truth data of the
object edges [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. But most of the datasets [6,7,8] are
designed for the segmentation task but not the edge detection.
The information about the internal edges is ignored in this case Subject 2 Subject 3
(Fig. 1). Such type of labeling makes it difficult to solve the
problems of detecting power lines in the image [4], which is Fig. 2. Example of original image and various ground truth from Berkeley
Segmentation Data Set and Benchmarks 500 [10]
978-1-7281-6949-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE

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 2020 9th M EDITERRANEAN C ONFERENCE ON E MBEDDED C OMPUTING
This work is devoted to the development of an algorithm
for generating a training dataset with unambiguous ground
truth (Fig. 3).
Images Edge gradients Contrasts Edges
Fig. 3. Example of generated images with ground truth
II. THE IMAGE GENERATION ALGORITHM
In accordance with the proposed algorithm (fig. 4), the first
step is the generation of reference data in vector format. To
perform this step, the random sequence of points in the image
space and the contrast value (the brightness difference of the
edge) in each of them are created. Several corner points are
randomly selected from this sequence of points. The random
arrangement of points provides a dataset of lines of any shape
and curvature, as well as corners of any angles. Then the
sequence of points is interpolated along with it contrasts. But
smoothing does not apply to corner points. After that, a
gradient field is building. It produces a ground truth image and
contrast shapes.
Also, a vector representation of the ground truth data can be
extracted from the list of points.
Contrast shape can be determined as the difference in
brightness around the edge. It plays the role of a frame when
creating an edge image. The contrast shape can be represented
as a supported temperature drop in a homogeneous medium. In
this case the brightness of each pixel will represent the
temperature of the medium at that point. Therefore, we can
apply numerical methods to solve the partial differential
equation for the next algorithm step.
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(MECO), 8-11 J UNE 2020, B UDVA , M ONTENEGRO
Vector data Vector data Vector data
Interpolation and rasterization of contrast shapes
Contrast
shapes
TensorFlow
Edges
Background
Noise
Final image
Fig. 4. Main steps of dataset generation
This approach was successfully implemented using the
TensorFlow [11]. This is one of the most computationally
intensive steps of the algorithm. The ability to execute this step
on the GPU using TensorFlow significantly reduces the overall
program runtime. However, this approach requires a large
number of iterations even for medium-sized images (from
500x500 pixels). This is caused by the slow transfer of “heat”
from pixels to pixels. We suggest starting with lower
resolutions and increasing the image by 2 times after several
iterations of heat transfer to reduce the calculation time. At the
same time, gradient fields and contrast shapes are formed for
new dimensions each time.
However, to prevent the strong aliasing of the resulting
edge, one or more additional image upsamplings followed by a
further downsamplings must be performed. This additional
processing is smoothing the result image.
At the last step of the algorithm all the edge images are
combined and non-uniform background and noise is added.
 2020 9th M EDITERRANEAN C ONFERENCE ON E MBEDDED C OMPUTING (MECO), 8-11 J UNE 2020, B UDVA , M ONTENEGRO
The noise has a Gaussian distribution. The background reducing the generation duration by 3 times. The experimental
generation is based on the approximation of the random examinations of the generated data have shown that it can be
brightness values at random points in the image. used in machine learning tasks.
The proposed edge images generation algorithm allows TABLE I. AVERAGE RUNTIME PER ONE IMAGE
receiving the reference data not only in the form of images, but
also in a vector (parametric) representation. This allows Batch Total Edges Postprocess (noise +
size time (Tensorflow) background)
significantly expanding the scope of its usage.
1 2.503501 2.179895 0.232935
2 1.438942 1.110552 0.234946
III. EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATIONS
4 0.957967 0.629361 0.234869

CPU
Using GPU is performed at one of the data generation 8 0.684292 0.363456 0.232995
stages. In all other stages, the CPU is used. Moreover, GPU 16 0.562541 0.243959 0.232308
computing has overhead associated with I/O operations. Thus, 32 0.502753 0.187143 0.231478
the benefits of using GPU are not obvious. To test the 64 0.492677 0.174597 0.232624
1 1.838084 1.509922 0.256365
computational efficiency of GPU usage compared to CPU, 10 2 1.623060 1.298968 0.250169
generations with different numbers of simultaneously 4 1.534589 1.215724 0.249382
generated image pairs (batch size) were performed. A

GPU
8 1.522095 1.202656 0.249195
computer with the following characteristics was used: 16 1.788908 1.468058 0.249954
Intel Xeon 2.2Ghz (1 core, 2 threads CPU); Nvidia Tesla K80; 32 1.731476 1.407539 0.250859
12.72 GB RAM. 64 1.665243 1.344029 0.249644

Each image contained two or three edges. Each edge could TABLE II. U-NET ARCHITECTURE
contain up to two smoothed vertexes and a maximum of one
angular vertex. The generated images were upscaled four Layer ID Type Out Skip
1 Conv 8 None
times, and downscaled once. The final resolution was 256x256 2 Pooling 8 None
pixels. The average time spent on one pair for different batch 3 Conv 16 None
sizes was calculated. The result is shown in Table 1. It shows 4 Pooling 16 None
that using GPU reduces the generation duration by about three 5 ResBlock 32 None
times. 6 Pooling 32 None
7 ResBlock 64 None
Additional research to test the usefulness of the generated 8 Pooling 64 None
data was performed. A neural network of the U-net class was 9 4 × ResBlock 128 None
trained on the generated training set that is consists of 4000 10 Conv 128 None
pairs of training pairs and 800 pairs of verification data [12]. 11 UpSampling 128 None
The architecture of this net is presents in Table 2. The last 12 Conv 64 None
convolutional layer used the Sigmoid activation function, while 13 Concat 128 7
14 ResBlock 64 None
the rest used ReLU. The size of the convolution core is 3×3. 15 UpSampling 64 None
Two-dimensional pooling with a core size of 2×2 and a step of 16 Conv 32 None
2×2. The structure of the Res block is shown in Table 3. The 17 Concat 64 5
Optimizer is Adam. The learning speed is 1e-5. 18 ResBlock 32 None
19 UpSamling 32 None
The reference data was binarized with a zero threshold for 20 Conv 16 None
greater contrast. The convolutional part of the pre-trained 21 Concat 32 3
VGG16 is applied to the network output and reference 22 Conv 16 None
data [13]. The average square of the difference between the 23 UpSampling 16 None
outputs of both VGG16 is taken as a loss function. After each 24 Conv 8 None
epoch, this network was applied to real images without 25 Concat 16 1
reference data. An example of the trained network performance 26 Conv 8 None
27 Conv 1 None
is shown in Figure 5. 28 Conv 1 None
IV. CONCLUSION Conv – two-dimensional convolutional layer; Pooling – two-dimensional pooling; Add – element-wise
addition; Concat – concatenation; UpSampling – increasing image resolution.
In this paper an algorithm for generating images containing
edges, as well as reference data describing these edges TABLE III. RESBLOCK ARCHITECTURE
graphically or parametrically, is proposed. A software Layer ID Type Out Skip
implementation of the algorithm [14] is developed in Python 3. 1 Conv 128 None
Neural network training can use both pre-generated data and 2 Conv 128 None
data generated on the fly. One of the most difficult stages of 3 Add 128 1
4 Conv 128 None
image generation can be implemented on the GPU. This allows

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 2020 9th M EDITERRANEAN C ONFERENCE ON E MBEDDED C OMPUTING
Fig. 5. Edge detection example
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Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Vermont Libraries. Downloaded on July 26,2020 at 02:20:26 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
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