# A Comparative Study of Deep Learning Classification Methods on a Small Environmental Microorganism Image Dataset (EMDS-6): from Convolutional Neural Networks to Visual Transformers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.07699 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07699/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12877/) (2020)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Xception: Deep Learning with Depthwise Separable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02357/) (2016)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [ShuffleNet V2: Practical Guidelines for Efficient CNN Architecture Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11164/) (2018)
- [Tokens-to-Token ViT: Training Vision Transformers from Scratch on ImageNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11986/) (2021)
- [Evaluation: from precision, recall and F-measure to ROC, informedness, markedness and correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.16061/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04202/) (2018)
- [Bottleneck Transformers for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11605/) (2021)
- [Frankenstein: Learning Deep Face Representations using Small Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06470/) (2016)
- [EMDS-5: Environmental Microorganism Image Dataset Fifth Version for Multiple Image Analysis Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10370/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [EBHI-Seg: A Novel Enteroscope Biopsy Histopathological Haematoxylin and Eosin Image Dataset for Image Segmentation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00532/) (2022)
- [Applications of Artificial Neural Networks in Microorganism Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Review from Conventional Multilayer Perceptron to Popular Convolutional Neural Network and Potential Visual Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00358/) (2021)
- [EMDS-6: Environmental Microorganism Image Dataset Sixth Version for Image Denoising, Segmentation, Feature Extraction, Classification and Detection Methods Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07111/) (2021)
- [EBHI:A New Enteroscope Biopsy Histopathological H&E Image Dataset for Image Classification Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08552/) (2022)
- [EMDS-7: Environmental Microorganism Image Dataset Seventh Version for Multiple Object Detection Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07723/) (2021)
- [A Comparative Study of Gastric Histopathology Sub-size Image Classification: from Linear Regression to Visual Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12843/) (2022)
- [A Comprehensive Survey with Quantitative Comparison of Image Analysis Methods for Microorganism Biovolume Measurements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09020/) (2022)
- [An application of Pixel Interval Down-sampling (PID) for dense tiny microorganism counting on environmental microorganism images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01341/) (2022)
- [TransferD2: Automated Defect Detection Approach in Smart Manufacturing using Transfer Learning Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13317/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In recent years, deep learning has made brilliant achievements in Environmental Microorganism (EM) image classification. However, image classification of small EM datasets has still not obtained good research results. Therefore, researchers need to spend a lot of time searching for models with good classification performance and suitable for the current equipment working environment. To provide reliable references for researchers, we conduct a series of comparison experiments on 21 deep learning models. The experiment includes direct classification, imbalanced training, and hyperparameter tuning experiments. During the experiments, we find complementarities among the 21 models, which is the basis for feature fusion related experiments. We also find that the data augmentation method of geometric deformation is difficult to improve the performance of VTs (ViT, DeiT, BotNet and T2T-ViT) series models. In terms of model performance, Xception has the best classification performance, the ViT model consumes the least time for training, and the ShuffleNet-V2 model has the least number of parameters.