# Attention-based Assisted Excitation for Salient Object Detection Source: [Attention-based Assisted Excitation for Salient Object Detection]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-27T06:02:46.151Z Authors: Saeed Masoudnia, Melika Kheirieh, Abdol-Hossein Vahabie, Babak Nadjar Araabi Published: 2020-03-31T13:33:33.000Z ## Abstract Visual attention brings significant progress for Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) in various applications. In this paper, object-based attention in human visual cortex inspires us to introduce a mechanism for modification of activations in feature maps of CNNs. In this mechanism, the activations of object locations are excited in feature maps. This mechanism is specifically inspired by attention-based gain modulation in object-based attention in brain. It facilitates figure-ground segregation in the visual cortex. Similar to brain, we use the idea to address two challenges in salient object detection: gathering object interior parts while segregation from background with concise boundaries. We implement the object-based attention in the U-net model using different architectures in the encoder parts, including AlexNet, VGG, and ResNet. The proposed method was examined on three benchmark datasets: HKU-IS, MSRB, and PASCAL-S. Experimental results showed that our inspired method could significantly improve the results in terms of mean absolute error and F-measure. The results also showed that our proposed method better captured not only the boundary but also the object interior. Thus, it can tackle the mentioned challenges. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()