# DDCNet: Deep Dilated Convolutional Neural Network for Dense Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.04715 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04715/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Multi-Scale Context Aggregation by Dilated Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07122/) (2015)
- [FlowNet: Learning Optical Flow with Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06852/) (2015)
- [Deep Networks with Stochastic Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09382/) (2016)
- [PWC-Net: CNNs for Optical Flow Using Pyramid, Warping, and Cost Volume](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.02371/) (2017)
- [A Large Dataset to Train Convolutional Networks for Disparity, Optical Flow, and Scene Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02134/) (2015)
- [FlowNet 2.0: Evolution of Optical Flow Estimation with Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01925/) (2016)
- [Understanding the Effective Receptive Field in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04128/) (2017)
- [Optical Flow Estimation using a Spatial Pyramid Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.00850/) (2016)
- [Auto-DeepLab: Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02985/) (2019)
- [Bayesian SegNet: Model Uncertainty in Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architectures for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02680/) (2015)
- [Deep Predictive Coding Networks for Video Prediction and Unsupervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.08104/) (2016)
- [UnFlow: Unsupervised Learning of Optical Flow with a Bidirectional Census Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07837/) (2017)
- [Back to Basics: Unsupervised Learning of Optical Flow via Brightness Constancy and Motion Smoothness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05842/) (2016)
- [Occlusion Aware Unsupervised Learning of Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05890/) (2017)
- [Models Matter, So Does Training: An Empirical Study of CNNs for Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05571/) (2018)
- [A Lightweight Optical Flow CNN - Revisiting Data Fidelity and Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07414/) (2019)
- [Single Image Depth Estimation Trained via Depth from Defocus Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05036/) (2020)
- [LiteFlowNet3: Resolving Correspondence Ambiguity for More Accurate Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09319/) (2020)
- [Effective Use of Dilated Convolutions for Segmenting Small Object Instances in Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.00179/) (2017)
- [Smoothed Dilated Convolutions for Improved Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08931/) (2018)
- [SDC - Stacked Dilated Convolution: A Unified Descriptor Network for Dense Matching Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03076/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised convolutional neural networks for motion estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.06087/) (2016)
- [Deep End2End Voxel2Voxel Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06681/) (2015)
- [Learning to Extract Motion from Videos in Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.07532/) (2016)
- [Learning Optical Flow via Dilated Networks and Occlusion Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.02733/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Segment, Shuffle, and Stitch: A Simple Layer for Improving Time-Series Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20082/) (2024)
- [SSTM: Spatiotemporal Recurrent Transformers for Multi-frame Optical Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14418/) (2023)
- [SciFlow: Empowering Lightweight Optical Flow Models with Self-Cleaning Iterations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08135/) (2024)
- [DDCNet-Multires: Effective Receptive Field Guided Multiresolution CNN for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05634/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dense pixel matching problems such as optical flow and disparity estimation are among the most challenging tasks in computer vision. Recently, several deep learning methods designed for these problems have been successful. A sufficiently larger effective receptive field (ERF) and a higher resolution of spatial features within a network are essential for providing higher-resolution dense estimates. In this work, we present a systemic approach to design network architectures that can provide a larger receptive field while maintaining a higher spatial feature resolution. To achieve a larger ERF, we utilized dilated convolutional layers. By aggressively increasing dilation rates in the deeper layers, we were able to achieve a sufficiently larger ERF with a significantly fewer number of trainable parameters. We used optical flow estimation problem as the primary benchmark to illustrate our network design strategy. The benchmark results (Sintel, KITTI, and Middlebury) indicate that our compact networks can achieve comparable performance in the class of lightweight networks.