This repository includes a keras implementation of semi-convolutional operators from Novotny et al., "Semi-convolutional Operators for Instance Segmentation". (Paper, Poster).

In general, the idea of semi-convolutions consists of mixing the convolutional operator with a non-convolutional information, e.g. the global pixel location, to solve the dilemma of convolutional coloring and translational invariance. Additionally, the authors got (small) improvements for Mask-RCNN on Microsoft COCO.

The approach is closely related to the so-called Coord-Conv method (Paper, Code). In contrast to Coord-Conv, the information of global pixel location is integrated by Addition instead of Concatenation. The paper aims at instance segmentation instead of simple object detection (proposal-based instance segmentation as well as semantic-based embeddings!).

• semiconv.py: Semi-Convolutional Layer, some examples of mixing functions.
• test_semiconv.py: Simple Python Script to visualize the Semi-Convolutional concept.

• Tensorflow is used as keras backend.
• Currently, the implementation supports the "channels_last" data format and 2d-convolutions.

• keras (tested with version 2.2.4.)
• tensorflow (tested with version 1.12.0)
• numpy, matplotlib
• tested with Python 3.6.

• add kernel for semi-convolutional embedding
• add embedding loss