Image Classification Based on Low-Level Feature Enhancement and Attention Mechanism

Deep learning-based image classification networks heavily rely on the extracted features. However, as the model becomes deeper, important features may be lost, resulting in decreased accuracy. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes an image classification method that enhances low-level features and incorporates an attention mechanism. The proposed method employs EfficientNet as the backbone network for feature extraction. Firstly, the Feature Enhancement Module quantifies and statistically processes low-level features from shallow layers, thereby enhancing the feature information. Secondly, the Convolutional Block Attention Module enhances the high-level features to improve the extraction of global features. Finally, the enhanced low-level features and global features are fused to supplement low-resolution global features with high-resolution details, further improving the model’s image classification ability. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed method achieves a Top-1 classification accuracy of 86.49% and a Top-5 classification accuracy of 96.90% on the ETH-Food101 dataset, 86.99% and 97.24% on the VireoFood-172 dataset, and 70.99% and 92.73% on the UEC-256 dataset. These results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in terms of classification performance.