CART-OD: Optimizing Object Detection Models via Correlation-Aware Prediction

A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) relies on intricate pixel correlations to predict objects within images, demonstrating improved performance when identifying objects alongside commonly co-occurring objects. For instance, a helicopter can be more accurately predicted when it appears with an aircraft carrier compared to when it stands alone. Influence on detecting an object due to the presence or absence of another object can be regarded as a form of contextual bias. This phenomenon poses a significant challenge in object detection. Addressing this bias is crucial. Our study explores correlation-aware prediction techniques to disentangle and leverage connections between objects. We propose CART-OD, a novel object detection approach that enhances model performance by adjusting the confidence scores of correlated objects during inference. By strategically intervening during prediction, CART-OD targets instances where commonly co-occurring objects appear separately, effectively mitigating the influence of object correlation. The adjustment in real-time makes the approach computationally efficient and scalable to handle large-scale datasets. Results indicate that CART-OD significantly enhances precision, recall, and mean average precision (mAP) in detecting objects that appear without their most correlated counterparts, underscoring the potential of correlation-aware strategies in object detection tasks.