Local Multi-Head Channel Self-Attention for Facial Expression Recognition
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Abstract (arXiv)
Since the Transformer architecture was introduced in 2017 there has been many attempts to bring the self-attention paradigm in the field of computer vision. In this paper we propose a novel self-attention module that can be easily integrated in virtually every convolutional neural network and that is specifically designed for computer vision, the LHC: Local (multi) Head Channel (self-attention). LHC is based on two main ideas: first, we think that in computer vision the best way to leverage the self-attention paradigm is the channel-wise application instead of the more explored spatial attention and that convolution will not be replaced by attention modules like recurrent networks were in NLP; second, a local approach has the potential to better overcome the limitations of convolution than global attention. With LHC-Net we managed to achieve a new state of the art in the famous FER2013 dataset with a significantly lower complexity and impact on the "host" architecture in terms of computational cost when compared with the previous SOTA.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 37 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Nov 2021.
Builds on
37 of 47 references.
References · 37
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 1; 2024: 1; 2025: 4.
7 papers.
- 2024ResEmoteNet: Bridging Accuracy and Loss Reduction in Facial Emotion Recognitioncited by 9
- 2023PAtt-Lite: Lightweight Patch and Attention MobileNet for Challenging Facial Expression Recognitioncited by 7
- 2022Cluster-level pseudo-labelling for source-free cross-domain facial expression recognitioncited by 5
- 2025EmoNeXt: an Adapted ConvNeXt for Facial Emotion Recognitioncited by 4
- 2025Multi-face emotion detection for effective Human-Robot Interactioncited by 1
- 20252D-3D Attention and Entropy for Pose Robust 2D Facial Recognitioncited by 1
- 2025Achieving 3D Attention via Triplet Squeeze and Excitation Blockcited by 0
- 20252D-3D Attention and Entropy for Pose Robust 2D Facial Recognition14 May 2025
- 2025Achieving 3D Attention via Triplet Squeeze and Excitation Block9 May 2025
- 2025EmoNeXt: an Adapted ConvNeXt for Facial Emotion Recognition14 Jan 2025
- 2025Multi-face emotion detection for effective Human-Robot Interaction13 Jan 2025
- 2024ResEmoteNet: Bridging Accuracy and Loss Reduction in Facial Emotion Recognition1 Sep 2024
- 2023PAtt-Lite: Lightweight Patch and Attention MobileNet for Challenging Facial Expression Recognition16 Jun 2023
- 2022Cluster-level pseudo-labelling for source-free cross-domain facial expression recognition11 Oct 2022