Feedback-driven object detection and iterative model improvement

Automated object detection has become increasingly valuable across diverse applications, yet efficient, high-quality annotation remains a persistent challenge. In this paper, we present the development and evaluation of a platform designed to interactively improve object detection models. The platform allows uploading and annotating images as well as fine-tuning object detection models. Users can then manually review and refine annotations, further creating improved snapshots that are used for automatic object detection on subsequent image uploads - a process we refer to as semi-automatic annotation resulting in a significant gain in annotation efficiency. Whereas iterative refinement of model results to speed up annotation has become common practice, we are the first to quantitatively evaluate its benefits with respect to time, effort, and interaction savings. Our experimental results show clear evidence for a significant time reduction of up to 53% for semi-automatic compared to manual annotation. Importantly, these efficiency gains did not compromise annotation quality, while matching or occasionally even exceeding the accuracy of manual annotations. These findings demonstrate the potential of our lightweight annotation platform for creating high-quality object detection datasets and provide best practices to guide future development of annotation platforms. The platform is open-source, with the frontend and backend repositories available on GitHub. To support the understanding of our labeling process, we have created an explanatory video demonstrating the methodology using microscopy images of E. coli bacteria as an example.

Sönke Tenckhoff, Mario Koddenbrock, Erik Rodner · 2024