Using swarm optimization to enhance autoencoder’s images

Abstract

Autoencoders learn data representations through reconstruction. Robust training is the key factor affecting the quality of the learned representations and, consequently, the accuracy of the application that use them. Previous works suggested methods for deciding the optimal autoencoder configuration which allows for robust training. Nevertheless, improving the accuracy of a trained autoencoder has got limited, if no, attention. We propose a new approach that improves the accuracy of a trained autoencoder’s results and answers the following question, Given a trained autoencoder, a test image, and using a real-parameter optimizer, can we generate better quality reconstructed image version than the one generated by the autoencoder?. Our proposed approach combines both the decoder part of a trained Resitricted Boltman Machine-based autoencoder with the Competitive Swarm Optimization algorithm. Experiments show that it is possible to reconstruct images using trained decoder from randomly initialized representations. Results also show that our approach reconstructed better quality images than the autoencoder in most of the test cases. Indicating that, we can use the approach for improving the performance of a pre-trained autoencoder if it does not give satisfactory results.