A computer-implemented method of enhancing object detection in a digital image of known underlying structure, and corresponding module, data processing apparatus and computer program

A module in a neural network which is configured to carry out a method of enhancing object detection in a digital image of known underlying structure using pre-processed images with underlying structure and with any objects detected and bounding boxes inserted over the objects, the method comprising:

• extracting or generating images with the underlying structure but without objects detected as negative images;
• extracting images with the underlying structure and with an object detected as positive images;
• inputting pairs of negative and positive images through a feature extraction section in a neural network to extract feature vectors of the images;
• contrasting feature vectors of each pair of positive and negative images and thereby provide a contrast vector and gating the result to form an attention vector;
• and
• processing the attention vector and the feature vector of the positive image to produce an output.

A data processing apparatus comprising:

• a memory;
• and a processor,
• wherein the memory comprises instructions for enhancing object detection in a digital image of known underlying structure using pre-processed images with underlying structure and with any objects detected and bounding boxes inserted over the objects, and
• the processor is configured to execute the instructions to:
• extract or generate images with the underlying structure but without objects detected as negative images;
• extract images with the underlying structure and with an object detected as positive images;
• input pairs of negative and positive images through a feature extraction section in a neural network to extract feature vectors of the images;
• contrast feature vectors of each pair of positive and negative images and thereby provide a contrast vector and gating the result to form an attention vector;
• and
• process the attention vector and the feature vector of the positive image to produce an output.