Papers › Investigating and Explaining the Frequency Bias in Image Classification

Investigating and Explaining the Frequency Bias in Image Classification

6 May 2022arXiv:2205.03154archive 2025-07-28

Zhiyu Lin, YiFei Gao, Jitao Sang

CNNs exhibit many behaviors different from humans, one of which is the capability of employing high-frequency components. This paper discusses the frequency bias phenomenon in image classification tasks: the high-frequency components are actually much less exploited than the low- and mid-frequency components. We first investigate the frequency bias phenomenon by presenting two observations on feature discrimination and learning priority. Furthermore, we hypothesize that (i) the spectral density, (ii) class consistency directly affect the frequency bias. Specifically, our investigations verify that the spectral density of datasets mainly affects the learning priority, while the class consistency mainly affects the feature discrimination.

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ClassificationImage Classificationimage-classification

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