Hyper-YOLO

Hyper-YOLO: When Visual Object Detection Meets Hypergraph Computation.

Yifan Feng, Jiangang Huang, Shaoyi Du, Shihui Ying, Jun-Hai Yong, Yipeng Li, Guiguang Ding, Rongrong Ji, and Yue Gao.

Abstract

We introduce Hyper-YOLO, a new object detection method that integrates hypergraph computations to capture the complex high-order correlations among visual features. Traditional YOLO models, while powerful, have limitations in their neck designs that restrict the integration of cross-level features and the exploitation of high-order feature interrelationships. To address these challenges, we propose the Hypergraph Computation Empowered Semantic Collecting and Scattering (HGC-SCS) framework, which transposes visual feature maps into a semantic space and constructs a hypergraph for high-order message propagation. This enables the model to acquire both semantic and structural information, advancing beyond conventional feature-focused learning. Hyper-YOLO incorporates the proposed Mixed Aggregation Network (MANet) in its backbone for enhanced feature extraction and introduces the Hypergraph-Based Cross-Level and Cross-Position Representation Network (HyperC2Net) in its neck. HyperC2Net operates across five scales and breaks free from traditional grid structures, allowing for sophisticated high-order interactions across levels and positions. This synergy of components positions Hyper-YOLO as a state-of-the-art architecture, as evidenced by its superior performance on the COCO dataset. Hyper-YOLO-N significantly outperforms the advanced YOLOv8-N with 12\% $\text{AP}^{val}$ improvements. Compared with SOTA Gold-YOLO-N, Hyper-YOLO-N achieves 5\% $\text{AP}^{val}$ improvement with only 72\% parameters.

Performance on MS COCO

Hyper-YOLO

Our Hyper-YOLO enhances the YOLOv8 architecture with hypergraph computation. The comparsion of four scale models are provided in the following table.

Model	Test Size	$AP^{val}$	$AP^{val}_{50}$	Params	FLOPs
YOLOv8-N	640	37.3	52.6	3.2 M	8.7 G
YOLOv8-S	640	44.9	61.8	11.2 M	28.6 G
YOLOv8-M	640	50.2	67.2	25.9 M	78.9 G
YOLOv8-L	640	52.9	69.8	43.7 M	165.2 G
HyperYOLO-T	640	38.5	54.5	3.2M	9.6G
HyperYOLO-N	640	41.8	58.3	4.0M	11.4G
HyperYOLO-S	640	48.0	65.1	14.8M	39.0G
HyperYOLO-M	640	52.0	69.0	33.8M	103.3G
HyperYOLO-L	640	53.8	70.9	56.3M	211.0G

Hyper-YOLO v1.1

Furthermore, we replace the neck of YOLOv9 with the proposed HyperC2Net of our Hyper-YOLO, termed Hyper-YOLOv1.1. The source codes of Hyper-YOLOv1.1 are avaiable in here.

Clearly, in each scale, the Hyper-YOLOv1.1 outperforms the YOLOv9, which demonstrates the effectiveness of our HyperC2Net in capturing high-order feature correlations. The comparison of four scale models are provided in the following table

Model	Test Size	$AP^{val}$	$AP^{val}_{50}$	Params	FLOPs
YOLOv9-T	640	38.3	53.1	2.0M	7.7G
YOLOv9-S	640	46.8	63.4	7.1M	26.4G
YOLOv9-M	640	51.4	68.1	20.0M	76.3G
YOLOv9-C	640	53.0	70.2	25.3M	102.1G
Hyper-YOLOv1.1-T	640	40.3	55.6	2.5M	10.8G
Hyper-YOLOv1.1-S	640	48.0	64.5	7.6M	29.9G
Hyper-YOLOv1.1-M	640	51.8	69.2	21.2M	87.4G
Hyper-YOLOv1.1-C	640	53.2	70.4	29.8M	115.5G

Installation

Clone repo and create conda environment (recommended). Then install requirements.txt in a Python>=3.8.0 environment, including PyTorch>=1.8. The command is as follows.

git clone https://github.com/iMoonLab/Hyper-YOLO.git  # clone
cd Hyper-YOLO
conda create -n Hyper-YOLO python=3.8
conda activate Hyper-YOLO
pip install -r requirements.txt  # install

You can also use the environment.yaml file and the conda command to install the required environment.

conda env create -f environment.yaml

Datasets

Data Preparation: Download the MS COCO dataset images (training, validation, and test sets) and corresponding labels, or prepare your custom dataset as shown below. Additionally, modify the dataset path in ultralytics/cfg/datasets/coco.yaml to reflect the location of your data.

coco
--images
  --train2017
  --val2017
--labels
  --train2017
  --val2017

Training

Most of training configurations can change in the "Train settings" section of ultralytics/cfg/default.yaml. The key factors are model, data, img, epoches, batch, device and training hyperparameters. For example, you can use "model: hyper-yolon.yaml" to train an object detection model.

python ultralytics/models/yolo/detect/train.py 

Evaluation

Most of evaluation configurations can change in the "Val/Test settings" section of ultralytics/cfg/default.yaml. The key factors are model(weight), data, img, batch, conf, iou, half.

python ultralytics/models/yolo/detect/val.py

Detection

Most of predict configurations can change in the "Predict settings" section of ultralytics/cfg/default.yaml. The key factors are model(weight), source, img, conf, iou.

python ultralytics/models/yolo/detect/predict.py

Segmentation

Here, our instance segmentation model configuration remains consistent with YOLOv8, by changing the object detection output head to an instance segmentation output head, while the backbone and neck remain unchanged. The model's training and testing process is similar to that of object detection. For example, you can use "model: hyper-yolon-seg.yaml" to train an instance segmentation model.

python ultralytics/models/yolo/segment/train.py
python ultralytics/models/yolo/segment/val.py
python ultralytics/models/yolo/segment/predict.py 

Export

Here is an example code for exporting an ONNX model. If you need to export other formats, please refer to our example code and the YOLOv8 documentation.

python ultralytics/utils/export_onnx.py

Acknowledgement

Our code is built based on the YOLOv8. Thanks for their great work!

Citation

If you find our work useful in your research, please consider citing:

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About Hypergraph Computation

Hypergraph computation is a powerful tool to capture high-order correlations among visual features. Compared with graphs, each hyperedge in a hypergraph can connect more than two vertices, which is more flexible to model complex correlations. Now, learning with high-order correlations still remains a under-explored area in computer vision. We hope our work can inspire more research in this direction. If you are interested in hypergraph computation, please refer to our series of works on hypergraph computation in the follows:

• Hypergraph Learning: Methods and Practices
• Hypergraph Nerual Networks
• HGNN+: General Hypergraph Nerual Networks
• Hypergraph Isomorphism Computation

Contact

Hyper-YOLO is maintained by iMoon-Lab, Tsinghua University. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via email: Yifan Feng and Jiangang Huang.