Segmenting Anything in Context: Introducing SegGPT
In the field of computer vision, segmenting and organizing important elements at the pixel level is a major challenge. Various segmentation tasks, such as foreground segmentation, interactive segmentation, and semantic segmentation, have made significant progress in recent years. However, these models are limited to specific tasks and data formats. When faced with new environments or tasks, a new model needs to be trained.
Training a Single Model for Infinite Segmentation Tasks
The aim of this study is to train a single model that can handle a wide range of segmentation tasks. This approach is more sustainable and eliminates the need for extensive annotation work. However, there are two main challenges: incorporating different data types and creating a flexible training scheme that can handle diverse tasks.
To overcome these challenges, researchers from Beijing Academy, Zhejiang University, and Peking University introduce SegGPT, a generalist paradigm for segmenting anything in context.
The SegGPT Framework
SegGPT integrates multiple segmentation tasks into a general learning framework. It treats segmentation as a generic format for visual perception. By converting different data types into the same picture format and using random color mapping for each sample, SegGPT formulates the training problem as an in-context coloring problem. This approach encourages the model to rely on contextual data rather than specific colors, making the training process more adaptable and generic.
Inference and Specialized Use Cases
After training, SegGPT can perform various segmentation tasks in pictures or videos using in-context inference. The model utilizes a context ensemble technique called featured ensemble, which allows it to take advantage of multiple examples. Additionally, SegGPT can serve as a specialist model for specific use cases by tailoring a customized prompt without modifying the model parameters.
Main Contributions of the Study
The researchers’ main contributions are:
- Introducing a single generalist model capable of handling a wide range of segmentation tasks
- Evaluating the pre-trained SegGPT directly for various tasks without fine-tuning
- Demonstrating strong segmentation skills for in-domain and out-of-domain targets
Check out the Paper, Project, and Github for more information.
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