CNN + LSTM model for images performs poorly on validation data set - tensorflow

Question

My training and loss curves look like below and yes, similar graphs have received comments like "Classic overfitting" and I get it.
My model looks like below,
input_shape_0 = keras.Input(shape=(3,100, 100, 1), name="img3")
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Conv2D(8, 3, activation="relu"))(input_shape_0)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Dropout(0.3))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(MaxPooling2D(2))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Conv2D(16, 3, activation="relu"))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(MaxPooling2D(2))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Conv2D(32, 3, activation="relu"))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(MaxPooling2D(2))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Dropout(0.3))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Flatten())(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Dropout(0.4))(model)
model = LSTM(16, kernel_regularizer=tf.keras.regularizers.l2(0.007))(model)
# model = Dense(100, activation="relu")(model)
# model = Dense(200, activation="relu",kernel_regularizer=tf.keras.regularizers.l2(0.001))(model)
model = Dense(60, activation="relu")(model)
# model = Flatten()(model)
model = Dropout(0.15)(model)
out = Dense(30, activation='softmax')(model)
model = keras.Model(inputs=input_shape_0, outputs = out, name="mergedModel")
def get_lr_metric(optimizer):
def lr(y_true, y_pred):
return optimizer.lr
return lr
opt = tf.keras.optimizers.RMSprop()
lr_metric = get_lr_metric(opt)
# merged.compile(loss='sparse_categorical_crossentropy',
optimizer='adam', metrics=['accuracy'])
model.compile(loss='sparse_categorical_crossentropy',
optimizer=opt, metrics=['accuracy',lr_metric])
model.summary()
In the above model building code, please consider the commented lines as some of the approaches I have tried so far.
I have followed the suggestions given as answers and comments to this kind of question and none seems to be working for me. Maybe I am missing something really important?
Things that I have tried:
Dropouts at different places and different amounts.
Played with inclusion and expulsion of dense layers and their number of units.
Number of units on the LSTM layer was tried with different values (started from as low as 1 and now at 16, I have the best performance.)
Came across weight regularization techniques and tried to implement them as shown in the code above and so tried to put it at different layers ( I need to know what is the technique in which I need to use it instead of simple trial and error - this is what I did and it seems wrong)
Implemented learning rate scheduler using which I reduce the learning rate as the epochs progress after a certain number of epochs.
Tried two LSTM layers with the first one having return_sequences = true.
After all these, I still cannot overcome the overfitting problem.
My data set is properly shuffled and divided in a train/val ratio of 80/20.
Data augmentation is one more thing that I found commonly suggested which I am yet to try, but I want to see if I am making some mistake so far which I can correct it and avoid diving into data augmentation steps for now. My data set has the below sizes:
Training images: 6780
Validation images: 1484
The numbers shown are samples and each sample will have 3 images. So basically, I input 3 mages at once as one sample to my time-distributed CNN which is then followed by other layers as shown in the model description. Following that, my training images are 6780 * 3 and my Validation images are 1484 * 3. Each image is 100 * 100 and is on channel 1.
I am using RMS prop as the optimizer which performed better than adam as per my testing
UPDATE
I tried some different architectures and some reularizations and dropouts at different places and I am now able to achieve a val_acc of 59% below is the new model.
# kernel_regularizer=tf.keras.regularizers.l2(0.004)
# kernel_constraint=max_norm(3)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Conv2D(32, 3, activation="relu"))(input_shape_0)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Dropout(0.3))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(MaxPooling2D(2))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Conv2D(64, 3, activation="relu"))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(MaxPooling2D(2))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Conv2D(128, 3, activation="relu"))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(MaxPooling2D(2))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(Dropout(0.3))(model)
model = tf.keras.layers.TimeDistributed(GlobalAveragePooling2D())(model)
model = LSTM(128, return_sequences=True,kernel_regularizer=tf.keras.regularizers.l2(0.040))(model)
model = Dropout(0.60)(model)
model = LSTM(128, return_sequences=False)(model)
model = Dropout(0.50)(model)
out = Dense(30, activation='softmax')(model)

Answer 1

Try to perform Data Augmentation as a preprocessing step. Lack of data samples can lead to such curves. You can also try using k-fold Cross Validation.

Answer 2

There are many ways to prevent overfitting, according to the papers below:
Dropout layers (Disabling randomly neurons). https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/JMLRdropout.pdf
Input Noise (e.g. Random Gaussian Noise on the imges). https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.07532.pdf
Random Data Augmentations (e.g. Rotating, Shifting, Scaling, etc.).
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11052.pdf
Adjusting Number of Layers & Units.
https://clgiles.ist.psu.edu/papers/UMD-CS-TR-3617.what.size.neural.net.to.use.pdf
Regularization Functions (e.g. L1, L2, etc)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329150256_A_Comparison_of_Regularization_Techniques_in_Deep_Neural_Networks
Early Stopping: If you notice that for N successive epochs that your model's training loss is decreasing, but the model performs poorly on validaiton data set, then It is a good sign to stop the training.
Shuffling the training data or K-Fold cross validation is also common way way of dealing with Overfitting.
I found this great repository, which contains examples of how to implement data augmentations:
https://github.com/kochlisGit/random-data-augmentations
Also, this repository here seems to have examples of CNNs that implement most of the above methods:
https://github.com/kochlisGit/Tensorflow-State-of-the-Art-Neural-Networks

Answer 3

The goal should be to get the model predict correctly irrespective of
the order in which the 3 images in the sample are arranged.
If the order of the images of each sample is not important for the training, I think your model does the inverse, the Timedistributed layers succeded by LSTM take into account the order of the three images. As a solution, primarily, you can add images by reordering the images of each sample (= Augmented data). Secondly, try to consider the three images as one image with three-channel and remove the Timedistributed layers (I'm not sure that the three-channels are more efficient but you can give it a try)