DEVICE AND METHOD FOR CLASSIFYING IMAGES USING A RANDOM MASK ATTENTION LAYER

A computer-implemented method for classifying images using an image classifier (107), wherein the image classifier (107) receives an input image (106) and outputs a classification (110), further wherein the classification depends on a second layer output of a second layer of the image classifier (107) comprising second layer output components, wherein computing the output of the second layer comprises the following steps:* Receive a second layer input (X) from a first layer;* Determine a first representation (Q) of the second layer input (X);* Determine a second representation (K) of the second layer input (X);* Determine a third representation (V) of the second layer input (X), wherein the third representation (V) comprises a plurality of third representation components;* Determine a set of weights for each second layer output component based on the first representation (Q) and the second representation (K), wherein each set of weights comprises one weight for each third representation component;* For each set of weights, randomly determine a subset of the corresponding set of weights, set the weights in the subset to a predefined or random value and normalize all other weights such that they sum to a second predefined value;* Determine the second layer output (O) by multiplying each third representation component with its respective weight from the second layer output component's set of weights.