Masked Feature Compression for Object Detection

Deploying high-accuracy detection models on lightweight edge devices (e.g., drones) is challenging due to hardware constraints. To achieve satisfactory detection results, a common solution is to compress and transmit the images to a cloud server where powerful models can be used. However, the image compression process for transmission may lead to a reduction in detection accuracy. In this paper, we propose a feature compression method tailored for object detection tasks, and it can be easily integrated with existing learned image compression models. In the method, the encoding process consists of two steps. Firstly, we use a feature extractor to obtain the low-level feature, and then use a mask generator to obtain an object mask to select regions containing objects. Secondly, we use a neural network encoder to compress the masked feature. As for decoding, a neural network decoder is used to restore the compressed representation into the feature that can be directly inputted into the object detection model. The experimental results demonstrate that our method surpasses existing compression techniques. Specifically, when compared to one of the leading methods—TCM2023—our approach achieves a 25.3% reduction in compressed file size and a 6.9% increase in mAP0.5.