# Flame-state monitoring based on very low number of visible or infrared images via few-shot learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07845 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07845/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07035/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The current success of machine learning on image-based combustion monitoring is based on massive data, which is costly even impossible for industrial applications. To address this conflict, we introduce few-shot learning in order to achieve combustion monitoring and classification for the first time. Two algorithms, Siamese Network coupled with k Nearest Neighbors (SN-kNN) and Prototypical Network (PN), were tested. Rather than utilizing solely visible images as discussed in previous studies, we also used Infrared (IR) images. We analyzed the training process, test performance and inference speed of two algorithms on both image formats, and also used t-SNE to visualize learned features. The results demonstrated that both SN-kNN and PN were capable to distinguish flame states from learning with merely 20 images per flame state. The worst performance, which was realized by PN on IR images, still possessed precision, accuracy, recall, and F1-score above 0.95. We showed that visible images demonstrated more substantial differences between classes and presented more consistent patterns inside the class, which made the training speed and model performance better compared to IR images. In contrast, the relatively low quality of IR images made it difficult for PN to extract distinguishable prototypes, which caused relatively weak performance. With the entrire training set supporting classification, SN-kNN performed well with IR images. On the other hand, benefitting from the architecture design, PN has a much faster speed in training and inference than SN-kNN. The presented work analyzed the characteristics of both algorithms and image formats for the first time, thus providing guidance for their future utilization in combustion monitoring tasks.