Comparison of Activation Functions in Convolutional Neural Network for Poisson Noisy Image Classification

Abstract

Deep learning, specifically the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), has been a significant technology tool for image processing and human health. CNNs, which mimic the working principles of the human brain, can learn robust representations of images. However, CNNs are susceptible to noise interference, which can impact classification performance. Choosing the right activation function can improve CNNs performance and accuracy. This research aims to test the accuracy of CNN with ResNet50, VGG16, and GoogleNet architectures combined with several activation functions such as ReLU, Leaky ReLU, Sigmoid, and Tanh in the classification of images that experience Poisson noise. Poisson noise is applied to each test data to evaluate CNN accuracy. The data used in this study consists of three scenarios of different numbers of classes, namely 3 classes, 5 classes, and 10 classes. The results showed that combining ResNet50 with the ReLU activation function produced the best performance in class recognition in each scenario of the number of classes experiencing Poisson noise interference. The model achieved 97% accuracy for 3-class data, 95% for 5-class data, and 90% for 10-class data. These results show that using ResNet50 with the ReLU activation function can provide excellent resistance to Poisson noise in image processing. It was found that as the number of classes increases, the accuracy of image recognition tends to decrease. This shows that the more complex the image classification task is with a larger number of classes, the more difficult it is for CNNs to distinguish between different classes. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2024-08-02-014 Full Text: PDF