DCTNets: Deep crowd transfer networks for an approximate crowd counting

Abstract

Due to the numerous real-world applications of the crowd counting job, it has become a popular research topic. Modern crowd counting systems have a sophisticated structure and employ a filter on a big image size, making them difficult to use. Because these technologies are computationally intensive and difficult to implement in small surveillance systems, they are not appropriate for use in small surveillance systems. They also function poorly in a variety of sizes and densities, as well. Transfer learning and deep convolutional neural network architecture are used to create a modest but efficient network, which we describe herein. We named the proposed crowd counting architecture deep crowd transfer network (DCTNets) since it incorporates both deep learning and transfer learning principles into a single system. Among DCTNets’ key components are a detection module that is based on mask R-CNNs and an estimate module that is based on deep convolutional neural networks. In the first step, we apply transfer learning to the Mask R-CNN model using the datasets ShanghaiTech, JHU-CROWD++, and UCF-QNRF. After that, we train and evaluate the complete architecture on these datasets using the transfer learning results. Input images are sent through a Mask R-CNN, which counts individuals and segments the counted region, then through an estimation network, which estimates the population size, and finally through a merge of the outputs from the two models. According to the findings of comparative tests, the proposed model outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches on the ShanghaiTech, JHU-CROWD++, and UCF-QNRF datasets.