1 # Validation Application
3 Inference Engine Validation Application is a tool that allows to infer deep learning models with
4 standard inputs and outputs configuration and to collect simple
5 validation metrics for topologies. It supports **top-1** and **top-5** metric for Classification networks and
6 11-points **mAP** metric for Object Detection networks.
8 Possible use cases of the tool:
9 * Check if the Inference Engine infers the public topologies well (the engineering team uses the Validation Application for
11 * Verify if a custom model is compatible with the default input/output configuration and compare its
12 accuracy with the public models
13 * Use Validation Application as another sample: although the code is much more complex than in classification and object
14 detection samples, the source code is open and can be re-used.
16 ## Validation Application Options
18 The Validation Application provides the following command-line interface (CLI):
20 Usage: validation_app [OPTION]
24 -h Print a help message
25 -t <type> Type of an inferred network ("C" by default)
26 -t "C" for classification
27 -t "OD" for object detection
28 -i <path> Required. Folder with validation images. Path to a directory with validation images. For Classification models, the directory must contain folders named as labels with images inside or a .txt file with a list of images. For Object Detection models, the dataset must be in VOC format.
29 -m <path> Required. Path to an .xml file with a trained model
30 -l <absolute_path> Required for CPU custom layers. Absolute path to a shared library with the kernel implementations
31 -c <absolute_path> Required for GPU custom kernels.Absolute path to an .xml file with the kernel descriptions.
32 -d <device> Target device to infer on: CPU (default), GPU, FPGA, or MYRIAD. The application looks for a suitable plugin for the specified device.
33 -b N Batch size value. If not specified, the batch size value is taken from IR
34 -ppType <type> Preprocessing type. Options: "None", "Resize", "ResizeCrop"
35 -ppSize N Preprocessing size (used with ppType="ResizeCrop")
36 -ppWidth W Preprocessing width (overrides -ppSize, used with ppType="ResizeCrop")
37 -ppHeight H Preprocessing height (overrides -ppSize, used with ppType="ResizeCrop")
38 --dump Dump file names and inference results to a .csv file
40 Classification-specific options:
41 -Czb true "Zero is a background" flag. Some networks are trained with a modified dataset where the class IDs are enumerated from 1, but 0 is an undefined "background" class (which is never detected)
43 Object detection-specific options:
44 -ODkind <kind> Type of an Object Detection model. Options: SSD
45 -ODa <path> Required for Object Detection models. Path to a directory containing an .xml file with annotations for images.
46 -ODc <file> Required for Object Detection models. Path to a file containing a list of classes
47 -ODsubdir <name> Directory between the path to images (specified with -i) and image name (specified in the .xml file). For VOC2007 dataset, use JPEGImages.
49 The tool options are divided into two categories:
50 1. **Common options** named with a single letter or a word, such as `-b` or `--dump`.
51 These options are the same in all Validation Application modes.
52 2. **Network type-specific options** named as an acronym of the network type (`C` or `OD`)
53 followed by a letter or a word.
57 When executed, the Validation Application perform the following steps:
59 1. Loads a model to an Inference Engine plugin
60 2. Reads validation set (specified with the `-i` option):
61 - if you specified a directory, the application tries to load labels first. To do this, it searches for the file
62 with the same name as a model, but with `.labels` extension (instead of `.xml`).
63 Then it searches for the specified folder, detects its sub-folders named as known labels, and adds all images from these sub-folders to the validation set. When there are no such sub-folders, validation set is considered empty.
65 - if you specified a `.txt` file, the application reads this file expecting every line to be in the correct format.
66 For more information about the format, refer to the <a href="#preparing">Preparing the Dataset</a> section below.
68 3. Reads the batch size value specified with the `-b` option and loads this number of images to the plugin
69 **Note**: Images loading time is not a part of inference time reported by the application.
71 4. The plugin infers the model, and the Validation Application collects the statistics.
73 You can also retrieve infer result by specifying the `--dump` option, however it generates a report only
74 for Classification models. This CLI option enables creation (if possible) of an inference report in
77 The structure of the report is a set of lines, each of them contains semicolon-separated values:
79 * a flag representing correctness of prediction
81 * probability that the image belongs to Top-1 class in per cents
83 * probability that the image belongs to Top-2 class in per cents
86 This is an example line from such report:
88 "ILSVRC2012_val_00002138.bmp";1;1;8.5;392;6.875;123;5.875;2;5.5;396;5;
90 It means that the given image was predicted correctly. The most probable prediction is that this image
91 represents class *1* with the probability *0.085*.
93 ## <a name="preparing"></a>Prepare a Dataset
95 You must prepare the dataset before running the Validation Application. The format of dataset depends on
96 a type of the model you are going to validate. Make sure that the dataset is format is applicable
97 for the chosen model type.
99 ### Dataset Format for Classification: Folders as Classes
101 In this case, a dataset has the following structure:
115 This structure means that each folder in dataset directory must have the name of one of the classes and contain all images of this class. In the given example, there are two images that represent the class `apron`, while three other classes have only one image
118 **NOTE:** A dataset can contain images of both `.bmp` and `.jpg` formats.
120 The correct way to use such dataset is to specify the path as `-i <path>/dataset`.
122 ### Dataset Format for Classification: List of Images (ImageNet-like)
124 If you want to use this dataset format, create a single file with a list of images. In this case, the correct set of files must be similar to the following:
135 Where `labels.txt` looks like:
144 Each line of the file must contain the name of the image and the ID of the class
145 that it represents in the format `<image_name> tabulation <class_id>`. For example, `apron1.bmp` represents the class with ID `411`.
147 **NOTE:** A dataset can contain images of both `.bmp` and `.jpg` formats.
149 The correct way to use such dataset is to specify the path as `-i <path>/dataset/labels.txt`.
151 ### Dataset Format for Object Detection (VOC-like)
153 Object Detection SSD models can be inferred on the original dataset that was used as a testing dataset during the model training.
154 To prepare the VOC dataset, follow the steps below :
156 1. Download the pre-trained SSD-300 model from the SSD GitHub* repository at
157 [https://github.com/weiliu89/caffe/tree/ssd](https://github.com/weiliu89/caffe/tree/ssd).
159 2. Download VOC2007 testing dataset:
161 $wget http://host.robots.ox.ac.uk/pascal/VOC/voc2007/VOCtest_06-Nov-2007.tar
162 tar -xvf VOCtest_06-Nov-2007.tar
164 3. Convert the model with the [Model Optimizer](docs/Model_Optimizer_Developer_Guide/prepare_trained_model/convert_model/Convert_Model_From_Caffe.md).
166 4. Create a proper `.txt` class file from the original `labelmap_voc.prototxt`. The new file must be in
167 the following format:
191 Save this file as `VOC_SSD_Classes.txt`.
193 ## Validate Classification Models
195 Once you have prepared the dataset (refer to the <a href="#preparing">Preparing the Dataset</a> section above),
196 run the following command to infer a classification model on the selected dataset:
198 ./validation_app -t C -i <path_to_images_directory_or_txt_file> -m <path_to_classification_model>/<model_name>.xml -d <CPU|GPU>
201 ## Validate Object Detection Models
203 **Note**: Validation Application was validated with SSD CNN. Any network that can be inferred by the Inference Engine
204 and has the same input and output format as one of these should be supported as well.
206 Once you have prepared the dataset (refer to the <a href="#preparing">Preparing the Dataset</a> section above),
207 run the following command to infer an Object Detection model on the selected dataset:
209 ./validation_app -d CPU -t OD -ODa "<path_to_VOC_dataset>/VOCdevkit/VOC2007/Annotations" -i "<path_to_VOC_dataset>/VOCdevkit" -m "<path_to_model>/vgg_voc0712_ssd_300x300.xml" -ODc "<path_to_classes_file>/VOC_SSD_Classes.txt" -ODsubdir JPEGImages
212 ## Understand Validation Application Output
214 During the validation process, you can see the interactive progress bar that represents the current validation stage. When it is
215 full, the validation process is over, and you can analyze the output.
217 Key data from the output:
218 * **Network loading time** - time spent on topology loading in ms
219 * **Model** - path to a chosen model
220 * **Model Precision** - precision of the chosen model
221 * **Batch size** - specified batch size
222 * **Validation dataset** - path to a validation set
223 * **Validation approach** - type of the model: Classification or Object Detection
224 * **Device** - device type
226 Below you can find the example output for Classification models, which reports average infer time and
227 **Top-1** and **Top-5** metric values:
229 Average infer time (ms): 588.977 (16.98 images per second with batch size = 10)
231 Top1 accuracy: 70.00% (7 of 10 images were detected correctly, top class is correct)
232 Top5 accuracy: 80.00% (8 of 10 images were detected correctly, top five classes contain required class)
235 Below you can find the example output for Object Detection models:
238 Progress: [....................] 100.00% done
239 [ INFO ] Processing output blobs
240 Network load time: 27.70ms
241 Model: /home/user/models/ssd/withmean/vgg_voc0712_ssd_300x300/vgg_voc0712_ssd_300x300.xml
242 Model Precision: FP32
244 Validation dataset: /home/user/Data/SSD-data/testonly/VOCdevkit
245 Validation approach: Object detection network
247 Average infer time (ms): 166.49 (6.01 images per second with batch size = 1)
248 Average precision per class table:
272 Mean Average Precision (mAP): 0.7767
275 This output shows the resulting `mAP` metric value for the SSD300 model used to prepare the
276 dataset. This value repeats the result stated in the
277 [SSD GitHub* repository](https://github.com/weiliu89/caffe/tree/ssd) and in the
278 [original arXiv paper](http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02325).
284 * [Using Inference Engine Samples](./docs/Inference_Engine_Developer_Guide/Samples_Overview.md)