ConvBLS: An Effective and Efficient Incremental Convolutional Broad Learning System for Image Classification

Abstract: Deep learning generally suffers from enormous computational resources and time-consuming training processes. Broad Learning System (BLS) and its convolutional variants have been proposed to mitigate these issues and have achieved superb performance in image classification. However, the existing convolutional-based broad learning system (C-BLS) either lacks an efficient training method and incremental learning capability or suffers from poor performance. To this end, we propose a convolutional broad learning system (ConvBLS) based on the spherical K-means (SKM) algorithm and two-stage multi-scale (TSMS) feature fusion, which consists of the convolutional feature (CF) layer, convolutional enhancement (CE) layer, TSMS feature fusion layer, and output layer. First, unlike the current C-BLS, the simple yet efficient SKM algorithm is utilized to learn the weights of CF layers. Compared with random filters, the SKM algorithm makes the CF layer learn more comprehensive spatial features. Second, similar to the vanilla BLS, CE layers are established to expand the feature space. Third, the TSMS feature fusion layer is proposed to extract more effective multi-scale features through the integration of CF layers and CE layers. Thanks to the above design and the pseudo-inverse calculation of the output layer weights, our proposed ConvBLS method is unprecedentedly efficient and effective. Finally, the corresponding incremental learning algorithms are presented for rapid remodeling if the model deems to expand. Experiments and comparisons demonstrate the superiority of our method.