It's possible to do object detection (one-class) in images retraining Inception model?

Question

There is a way to do object detection, retraining Inception model provided by Google in Tensorflow? The goal is to predict wheter an image contains a defined category of objects (e.g. balls) or not. I can think about it as a one-class classification or multi-class with only two categories (ball and not-ball images). However, in the latter I think that it's very difficult to create a good training set (how many and which kind of not-ball images I need?).

Answer 1

Yes, there is a way to tell if something is a ball. However, it is better to use Google's Tensorflow Object Detection API for Tensorflow. Instead of saying "ball/no ball," it will tell you it thinks something is a ball with XX% accuracy.

To answer your other questions: with object detection, you don't need non-ball images for training. You should gather about 400-500 ball images (more is almost always better), split them into a training and an eval group, and label them with this. Then you should convert your labels and images into a .record file according to this. After that, you should set up Tensorflow and train.

This entire process is not easy. It took me a good couple of weeks with an iOS background to successfully train a single object detector. But it is worth it in the end, because now I can rapidly switch out images to train a different object detector whenever an app needs it.

Bonus: use this to convert your new TF model into a .mlmodel usable by iOS/Android.