Monday, April 20, 2026

Consideration-based Picture Captioning with Keras


In picture captioning, an algorithm is given a picture and tasked with producing a wise caption. It’s a difficult activity for a number of causes, not the least being that it entails a notion of saliency or relevance. Because of this current deep studying approaches principally embody some “consideration” mechanism (generally even a couple of) to assist specializing in related picture options.

On this submit, we exhibit a formulation of picture captioning as an encoder-decoder drawback, enhanced by spatial consideration over picture grid cells. The thought comes from a current paper on Neural Picture Caption Era with Visible Consideration (Xu et al. 2015), and employs the identical sort of consideration algorithm as detailed in our submit on machine translation.

We’re porting Python code from a current Google Colaboratory pocket book, utilizing Keras with TensorFlow keen execution to simplify our lives.

Conditions

The code proven right here will work with the present CRAN variations of tensorflow, keras, and tfdatasets.
Examine that you just’re utilizing at the very least model 1.9 of TensorFlow. If that isn’t the case, as of this writing, this

will get you model 1.10.

When loading libraries, please be sure to’re executing the primary 4 traces on this precise order.
We want to ensure we’re utilizing the TensorFlow implementation of Keras (tf.keras in Python land), and we’ve got to allow keen execution earlier than utilizing TensorFlow in any method.

No must copy-paste any code snippets – you’ll discover the entire code (so as mandatory for execution) right here: eager-image-captioning.R.

The dataset

MS-COCO (“Frequent Objects in Context”) is considered one of, maybe the, reference dataset in picture captioning (object detection and segmentation, too).
We’ll be utilizing the coaching photos and annotations from 2014 – be warned, relying in your location, the obtain can take a lengthy time.

After unpacking, let’s outline the place the photographs and captions are.

annotation_file <- "train2014/annotations/captions_train2014.json"
image_path <- "train2014/train2014"

The annotations are in JSON format, and there are 414113 of them! Fortunately for us we didn’t should obtain that many photos – each picture comes with 5 completely different captions, for higher generalizability.

annotations <- fromJSON(file = annotation_file)
annot_captions <- annotations[[4]]

num_captions <- size(annot_captions)

We retailer each annotations and picture paths in lists, for later loading.

all_captions <- vector(mode = "record", size = num_captions)
all_img_names <- vector(mode = "record", size = num_captions)

for (i in seq_len(num_captions)) {
  caption <- paste0(" ",
                    annot_captions[[i]][["caption"]],
                    " "
                    )
  image_id <- annot_captions[[i]][["image_id"]]
  full_coco_image_path <- sprintf(
    "%s/COCO_train2014_percent012d.jpg",
    image_path,
    image_id
  )
  all_img_names[[i]] <- full_coco_image_path
  all_captions[[i]] <- caption
}

Relying in your computing surroundings, you’ll for positive wish to prohibit the variety of examples used.
This submit will use 30000 captioned photos, chosen randomly, and put aside 20% for validation.

Beneath, we take random samples, cut up into coaching and validation components. The companion code will even retailer the indices on disk, so you possibly can decide up on verification and evaluation later.

num_examples <- 30000

random_sample <- pattern(1:num_captions, dimension = num_examples)
train_indices <- pattern(random_sample, dimension = size(random_sample) * 0.8)
validation_indices <- setdiff(random_sample, train_indices)

sample_captions <- all_captions[random_sample]
sample_images <- all_img_names[random_sample]
train_captions <- all_captions[train_indices]
train_images <- all_img_names[train_indices]
validation_captions <- all_captions[validation_indices]
validation_images <- all_img_names[validation_indices]

Interlude

Earlier than actually diving into the technical stuff, let’s take a second to replicate on this activity.
In typical image-related deep studying walk-throughs, we’re used to seeing well-defined issues – even when in some circumstances, the answer could also be laborious. Take, for instance, the stereotypical canine vs. cat drawback. Some canine could appear to be cats and a few cats could appear to be canine, however that’s about it: All in all, within the normal world we dwell in, it needs to be a kind of binary query.

If, however, we ask individuals to explain what they see in a scene, it’s to be anticipated from the outset that we’ll get completely different solutions. Nonetheless, how a lot consensus there may be will very a lot depend upon the concrete dataset we’re utilizing.

Let’s check out some picks from the very first 20 coaching gadgets sampled randomly above.

Now this picture doesn’t depart a lot room for resolution what to concentrate on, and acquired a really factual caption certainly: “There’s a plate with one slice of bacon a half of orange and bread.” If the dataset had been all like this, we’d assume a machine studying algorithm ought to do fairly nicely right here.

Selecting one other one from the primary 20:

Figure from MS-COCO 2014

What can be salient data to you right here? The caption offered goes “A smiling little boy has a checkered shirt.”
Is the look of the shirt as necessary as that? You would possibly as nicely concentrate on the surroundings, – and even one thing on a very completely different degree: The age of the photograph, or it being an analog one.

Let’s take a ultimate instance.

From MS-COCO 2014

What would you say about this scene? The official label we sampled right here is “A gaggle of individuals posing in a humorous method for the digital camera.” Effectively …

Please don’t overlook that for every picture, the dataset consists of 5 completely different captions (though our n = 30000 samples in all probability gained’t).
So this isn’t saying the dataset is biased – in no way. As a substitute, we wish to level out the ambiguities and difficulties inherent within the activity. Truly, given these difficulties, it’s all of the extra wonderful that the duty we’re tackling right here – having a community mechanically generate picture captions – needs to be potential in any respect!

Now let’s see how we are able to do that.

For the encoding a part of our encoder-decoder community, we’ll make use of InceptionV3 to extract picture options. In precept, which options to extract is as much as experimentation, – right here we simply use the final layer earlier than the absolutely linked high:

image_model <- application_inception_v3(
  include_top = FALSE,
  weights = "imagenet"
)

For a picture dimension of 299×299, the output can be of dimension (batch_size, 8, 8, 2048), that’s, we’re making use of 2048 function maps.

InceptionV3 being a “large mannequin,” the place each cross by the mannequin takes time, we wish to precompute options prematurely and retailer them on disk.
We’ll use tfdatasets to stream photos to the mannequin. This implies all our preprocessing has to make use of tensorflow capabilities: That’s why we’re not utilizing the extra acquainted image_load from keras under.

Our customized load_image will learn in, resize and preprocess the photographs as required to be used with InceptionV3:

load_image <- perform(image_path) {
  img <-
    tf$read_file(image_path) %>%
    tf$picture$decode_jpeg(channels = 3) %>%
    tf$picture$resize_images(c(299L, 299L)) %>%
    tf$keras$functions$inception_v3$preprocess_input()
  record(img, image_path)
}

Now we’re prepared to save lots of the extracted options to disk. The (batch_size, 8, 8, 2048)-sized options can be flattened to (batch_size, 64, 2048). The latter form is what our encoder, quickly to be mentioned, will obtain as enter.

preencode <- distinctive(sample_images) %>% unlist() %>% kind()
num_unique <- size(preencode)

# adapt this based on your system's capacities  
batch_size_4save <- 1
image_dataset <-
  tensor_slices_dataset(preencode) %>%
  dataset_map(load_image) %>%
  dataset_batch(batch_size_4save)
  
save_iter <- make_iterator_one_shot(image_dataset)
  
until_out_of_range({
  
  save_count <- save_count + batch_size_4save
  batch_4save <- save_iter$get_next()
  img <- batch_4save[[1]]
  path <- batch_4save[[2]]
  batch_features <- image_model(img)
  batch_features <- tf$reshape(
    batch_features,
    record(dim(batch_features)[1], -1L, dim(batch_features)[4]
  )
                               )
  for (i in 1:dim(batch_features)[1]) {
    np$save(path[i]$numpy()$decode("utf-8"),
            batch_features[i, , ]$numpy())
  }
    
})

Earlier than we get to the encoder and decoder fashions although, we have to handle the captions.

Processing the captions

We’re utilizing keras text_tokenizer and the textual content processing capabilities texts_to_sequences and pad_sequences to rework ascii textual content right into a matrix.

# we'll use the 5000 most frequent phrases solely
top_k <- 5000
tokenizer <- text_tokenizer(
  num_words = top_k,
  oov_token = "",
  filters = '!"#$%&()*+.,-/:;=?@[]^_`~ ')
tokenizer$fit_on_texts(sample_captions)

train_captions_tokenized <-
  tokenizer %>% texts_to_sequences(train_captions)
validation_captions_tokenized <-
  tokenizer %>% texts_to_sequences(validation_captions)

# pad_sequences will use 0 to pad all captions to the identical size
tokenizer$word_index[""] <- 0

# create a lookup dataframe that permits us to go in each instructions
word_index_df <- information.body(
  phrase = tokenizer$word_index %>% names(),
  index = tokenizer$word_index %>% unlist(use.names = FALSE),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
word_index_df <- word_index_df %>% prepare(index)

decode_caption <- perform(textual content) {
  paste(map(textual content, perform(quantity)
    word_index_df %>%
      filter(index == quantity) %>%
      choose(phrase) %>%
      pull()),
    collapse = " ")
}

# pad all sequences to the identical size (the utmost size, in our case)
# may experiment with shorter padding (truncating the very longest captions)
caption_lengths <- map(
  all_captions[1:num_examples],
  perform(c) str_split(c," ")[[1]] %>% size()
  ) %>% unlist()
max_length <- fivenum(caption_lengths)[5]

train_captions_padded <-  pad_sequences(
  train_captions_tokenized,
  maxlen = max_length,
  padding = "submit",
  truncating = "submit"
)

validation_captions_padded <- pad_sequences(
  validation_captions_tokenized,
  maxlen = max_length,
  padding = "submit",
  truncating = "submit"
)

Loading the information for coaching

Now that we’ve taken care of pre-extracting the options and preprocessing the captions, we’d like a strategy to stream them to our captioning mannequin. For that, we’re utilizing tensor_slices_dataset from tfdatasets, passing within the record of paths to the photographs and the preprocessed captions. Loading the photographs is then carried out as a TensorFlow graph operation (utilizing tf$pyfunc).

The unique Colab code additionally shuffles the information on each iteration. Relying in your {hardware}, this will likely take a very long time, and given the dimensions of the dataset it’s not strictly essential to get affordable outcomes. (The outcomes reported under had been obtained with out shuffling.)

batch_size <- 10
buffer_size <- num_examples

map_func <- perform(img_name, cap) {
  p <- paste0(img_name$decode("utf-8"), ".npy")
  img_tensor <- np$load(p)
  img_tensor <- tf$solid(img_tensor, tf$float32)
  record(img_tensor, cap)
}

train_dataset <-
  tensor_slices_dataset(record(train_images, train_captions_padded)) %>%
  dataset_map(
    perform(item1, item2) tf$py_func(map_func, record(item1, item2), record(tf$float32, tf$int32))
  ) %>%
  # optionally shuffle the dataset
  # dataset_shuffle(buffer_size) %>%
  dataset_batch(batch_size)

Captioning mannequin

The mannequin is principally the identical as that mentioned within the machine translation submit. Please consult with that article for a proof of the ideas, in addition to an in depth walk-through of the tensor shapes concerned at each step. Right here, we offer the tensor shapes as feedback within the code snippets, for fast overview/comparability.

Nevertheless, if you happen to develop your individual fashions, with keen execution you possibly can merely insert debugging/logging statements at arbitrary locations within the code – even in mannequin definitions. So you possibly can have a perform

maybecat <- perform(context, x) {
  if (debugshapes) {
    identify <- enexpr(x)
    dims <- paste0(dim(x), collapse = " ")
    cat(context, ": form of ", identify, ": ", dims, "n", sep = "")
  }
}

And if you happen to now set

you possibly can hint – not solely tensor shapes, however precise tensor values by your fashions, as proven under for the encoder. (We don’t show any debugging statements after that, however the pattern code has many extra.)

Encoder

Now it’s time to outline some some sizing-related hyperparameters and housekeeping variables:

# for encoder output
embedding_dim <- 256
# decoder (LSTM) capability
gru_units <- 512
# for decoder output
vocab_size <- top_k
# variety of function maps gotten from Inception V3
features_shape <- 2048
# form of consideration options (flattened from 8x8)
attention_features_shape <- 64

The encoder on this case is only a absolutely linked layer, taking within the options extracted from Inception V3 (in flattened type, as they had been written to disk), and embedding them in 256-dimensional house.

cnn_encoder <- perform(embedding_dim, identify = NULL) {
    
  keras_model_custom(identify = identify, perform(self) {
      
    self$fc <- layer_dense(models = embedding_dim, activation = "relu")
      
    perform(x, masks = NULL) {
      # enter form: (batch_size, 64, features_shape)
      maybecat("encoder enter", x)
      # form after fc: (batch_size, 64, embedding_dim)
      x <- self$fc(x)
      maybecat("encoder output", x)
      x
    }
  })
}

Consideration module

In contrast to within the machine translation submit, right here the eye module is separated out into its personal customized mannequin.
The logic is similar although:

attention_module <- perform(gru_units, identify = NULL) {
  
  keras_model_custom(identify = identify, perform(self) {
    
    self$W1 = layer_dense(models = gru_units)
    self$W2 = layer_dense(models = gru_units)
    self$V = layer_dense(models = 1)
      
    perform(inputs, masks = NULL) {
      options <- inputs[[1]]
      hidden <- inputs[[2]]
      # options(CNN_encoder output) form == (batch_size, 64, embedding_dim)
      # hidden form == (batch_size, gru_units)
      # hidden_with_time_axis form == (batch_size, 1, gru_units)
      hidden_with_time_axis <- k_expand_dims(hidden, axis = 2)
        
      # rating form == (batch_size, 64, 1)
      rating <- self$V(k_tanh(self$W1(options) + self$W2(hidden_with_time_axis)))
      # attention_weights form == (batch_size, 64, 1)
      attention_weights <- k_softmax(rating, axis = 2)
      # context_vector form after sum == (batch_size, embedding_dim)
      context_vector <- k_sum(attention_weights * options, axis = 2)
        
      record(context_vector, attention_weights)
    }
  })
}

Decoder

The decoder at every time step calls the eye module with the options it acquired from the encoder and its final hidden state, and receives again an consideration vector. The eye vector will get concatenated with the present enter and additional processed by a GRU and two absolutely linked layers, the final of which provides us the (unnormalized) chances for the following phrase within the caption.

The present enter at every time step right here is the earlier phrase: the proper one throughout coaching (trainer forcing), the final generated one throughout inference.

rnn_decoder <- perform(embedding_dim, gru_units, vocab_size, identify = NULL) {
    
  keras_model_custom(identify = identify, perform(self) {
      
    self$gru_units <- gru_units
    self$embedding <- layer_embedding(input_dim = vocab_size, 
                                      output_dim = embedding_dim)
    self$gru <- if (tf$take a look at$is_gpu_available()) {
      layer_cudnn_gru(
        models = gru_units,
        return_sequences = TRUE,
        return_state = TRUE,
        recurrent_initializer = 'glorot_uniform'
      )
    } else {
      layer_gru(
        models = gru_units,
        return_sequences = TRUE,
        return_state = TRUE,
        recurrent_initializer = 'glorot_uniform'
      )
    }
      
    self$fc1 <- layer_dense(models = self$gru_units)
    self$fc2 <- layer_dense(models = vocab_size)
      
    self$consideration <- attention_module(self$gru_units)
      
    perform(inputs, masks = NULL) {
      x <- inputs[[1]]
      options <- inputs[[2]]
      hidden <- inputs[[3]]
        
      c(context_vector, attention_weights) %<-% 
        self$consideration(record(options, hidden))
        
      # x form after passing by embedding == (batch_size, 1, embedding_dim)
      x <- self$embedding(x)
        
      # x form after concatenation == (batch_size, 1, 2 * embedding_dim)
      x <- k_concatenate(record(k_expand_dims(context_vector, 2), x))
        
      # passing the concatenated vector to the GRU
      c(output, state) %<-% self$gru(x)
        
      # form == (batch_size, 1, gru_units)
      x <- self$fc1(output)
        
      # x form == (batch_size, gru_units)
      x <- k_reshape(x, c(-1, dim(x)[[3]]))
        
      # output form == (batch_size, vocab_size)
      x <- self$fc2(x)
        
      record(x, state, attention_weights)
        
    }
  })
}

Loss perform, and instantiating all of it

Now that we’ve outlined our mannequin (constructed of three customized fashions), we nonetheless want to truly instantiate it (being exact: the 2 courses we’ll entry from exterior, that’s, the encoder and the decoder).

We additionally must instantiate an optimizer (Adam will do), and outline our loss perform (categorical crossentropy).
Be aware that tf$nn$sparse_softmax_cross_entropy_with_logits expects uncooked logits as a substitute of softmax activations, and that we’re utilizing the sparse variant as a result of our labels will not be one-hot-encoded.

encoder <- cnn_encoder(embedding_dim)
decoder <- rnn_decoder(embedding_dim, gru_units, vocab_size)

optimizer = tf$prepare$AdamOptimizer()

cx_loss <- perform(y_true, y_pred) {
  masks <- 1 - k_cast(y_true == 0L, dtype = "float32")
  loss <- tf$nn$sparse_softmax_cross_entropy_with_logits(
    labels = y_true,
    logits = y_pred
  ) * masks
  tf$reduce_mean(loss)
}

Coaching

Coaching the captioning mannequin is a time-consuming course of, and you’ll for positive wish to save the mannequin’s weights!
How does this work with keen execution?

We create a tf$prepare$Checkpoint object, passing it the objects to be saved: In our case, the encoder, the decoder, and the optimizer. Later, on the finish of every epoch, we’ll ask it to write down the respective weights to disk.

restore_checkpoint <- FALSE

checkpoint_dir <- "./checkpoints_captions"
checkpoint_prefix <- file.path(checkpoint_dir, "ckpt")
checkpoint <- tf$prepare$Checkpoint(
  optimizer = optimizer,
  encoder = encoder,
  decoder = decoder
)

As we’re simply beginning to prepare the mannequin, restore_checkpoint is ready to false. Later, restoring the weights can be as simple as

if (restore_checkpoint) {
  checkpoint$restore(tf$prepare$latest_checkpoint(checkpoint_dir))
}

The coaching loop is structured similar to within the machine translation case: We loop over epochs, batches, and the coaching targets, feeding within the right earlier phrase at each timestep.
Once more, tf$GradientTape takes care of recording the ahead cross and calculating the gradients, and the optimizer applies the gradients to the mannequin’s weights.
As every epoch ends, we additionally save the weights.

num_epochs <- 20

if (!restore_checkpoint) {
  for (epoch in seq_len(num_epochs)) {
    
    total_loss <- 0
    progress <- 0
    train_iter <- make_iterator_one_shot(train_dataset)
    
    until_out_of_range({
      
      batch <- iterator_get_next(train_iter)
      loss <- 0
      img_tensor <- batch[[1]]
      target_caption <- batch[[2]]
      
      dec_hidden <- k_zeros(c(batch_size, gru_units))
      
      dec_input <- k_expand_dims(
        rep(record(word_index_df[word_index_df$word == "", "index"]), 
            batch_size)
      )
      
      with(tf$GradientTape() %as% tape, {
        
        options <- encoder(img_tensor)
        
        for (t in seq_len(dim(target_caption)[2] - 1)) {
          c(preds, dec_hidden, weights) %<-%
            decoder(record(dec_input, options, dec_hidden))
          loss <- loss + cx_loss(target_caption[, t], preds)
          dec_input <- k_expand_dims(target_caption[, t])
        }
        
      })
      
      total_loss <-
        total_loss + loss / k_cast_to_floatx(dim(target_caption)[2])
      
      variables <- c(encoder$variables, decoder$variables)
      gradients <- tape$gradient(loss, variables)
      
      optimizer$apply_gradients(purrr::transpose(record(gradients, variables)),
                                global_step = tf$prepare$get_or_create_global_step()
      )
    })
    cat(paste0(
      "nnTotal loss (epoch): ",
      epoch,
      ": ",
      (total_loss / k_cast_to_floatx(buffer_size)) %>% as.double() %>% spherical(4),
      "n"
    ))
    
    checkpoint$save(file_prefix = checkpoint_prefix)
  }
}

Peeking at outcomes

Similar to within the translation case, it’s attention-grabbing to take a look at mannequin efficiency throughout coaching. The companion code has that performance built-in, so you possibly can watch mannequin progress for your self.

The fundamental perform right here is get_caption: It will get handed the trail to a picture, masses it, obtains its options from Inception V3, after which asks the encoder-decoder mannequin to generate a caption. If at any level the mannequin produces the finish image, we cease early. In any other case, we proceed till we hit the predefined most size.

Anderson et al. 2017) use object detection methods to bottom-up isolate attention-grabbing objects, and an LSTM stack whereby the primary LSTM computes top-down consideration guided by the output phrase generated by the second.

One other attention-grabbing strategy involving consideration is utilizing a multimodal attentive translator (Liu et al. 2017), the place the picture options are encoded and introduced in a sequence, such that we find yourself with sequence fashions each on the encoding and the decoding sides.

One other different is so as to add a discovered matter to the data enter (Zhu, Xue, and Yuan 2018), which once more is a top-down function present in human cognition.

In the event you discover considered one of these, or yet one more, strategy extra convincing, an keen execution implementation, within the fashion of the above, will probably be a sound method of implementing it.

Anderson, Peter, Xiaodong He, Chris Buehler, Damien Teney, Mark Johnson, Stephen Gould, and Lei Zhang. 2017. “Backside-up and High-down Consideration for Picture Captioning and VQA.” CoRR abs/1707.07998. http://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07998.
Liu, Chang, Fuchun Solar, Changhu Wang, Feng Wang, and Alan L. Yuille. 2017. “A Multimodal Attentive Translator for Picture Captioning.” CoRR abs/1702.05658. http://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05658.
Xu, Kelvin, Jimmy Ba, Ryan Kiros, Kyunghyun Cho, Aaron C. Courville, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Richard S. Zemel, and Yoshua Bengio. 2015. “Present, Attend and Inform: Neural Picture Caption Era with Visible Consideration.” CoRR abs/1502.03044. http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03044.
Zhu, Zhihao, Zhan Xue, and Zejian Yuan. 2018. “A Subject-Guided Consideration for Picture Captioning.” CoRR abs/1807.03514v1. https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03514v1.

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