ECGYOLO: Mask Detection Algorithm

Abstract

Of past years, wearing masks has turned into a necessity in daily life due to the rampant new coronavirus and the increasing importance people place on health and life safety. However, current mask detection algorithms are difficult to run on low-computing-power hardware platforms and have low accuracy. To resolve this discrepancy, a lightweight mask inspection algorithm ECGYOLO based on improved YOLOv7tiny is proposed. This algorithm uses GhostNet to replace the original convolutional layer with ECG module instead of ELAN module, which greatly improves the inspection efficiency and decreases the parameters of the model. In the meantime, the ECA (efficient channel attention) mechanism is led into the neck section to boost the feature fetch capability of the channel, and Mosaic and Mixup data enhancement techniques are adopted in training to obtain mask images under different viewpoints to improve the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of the model. Experiments show that the mAP (mean average precision) of the algorithm is raised by 4.4% to 92.75%, and the number of arguments is decreased by 1.14 M to 5.06M compared with the original YOLOv7tiny. ECGYOLO is more efficient than other algorithms at present and can meet the real-time and lightweight needs of mask detection.

AI for Computational Vision, Natural Language Processing, and Geoinformatics

“…Most existing object detection algorithms are based on the YOLO algorithm and have been applied in various fields, such as citrus orchards [30], driver distraction [31], ship detection [32], steel plate defect detection [33], etc. Article [34] introduces a lightweight mask detection algorithm called ECGYOLO based on improved YOLOv7tiny. This algorithm replaces the ELAN module with an ECG module and introduces an ECA mechanism in the neck section, which can meet the real-time and lightweight requirements of mask detection.…”