model.evaluate() varies wildly with number of steps when using generators - tensorflow

Question

Running tensorflow 2.x in Colab with its internal keras version (tf.keras). My model is a 3D convolutional UNET for multiclass segmentation (not sure if it's relevant).
I've successfully trained (high enough accuracy on validation) this model the traditional way but I'd like to do augmentation to improve it, therefore I'm switching to (hand-written) generators. When I use generators I see my loss increasing and my accuracy decreasing a lot (e.g.: loss increasing 4-fold, not some %) in the fit.
To try to localize the issue I've tried loading my trained weights and computing the metrics on the data returned by the generators. And what's happening makes no sense. I can see that the results visually are ok.
model.evaluate(validationGenerator,steps=1)
2s 2s/step - loss: 0.4037 - categorical_accuracy: 0.8716
model.evaluate(validationGenerator,steps=2)
2s/step - loss: 1.7825 - categorical_accuracy: 0.7158
model.evaluate(validationGenerator,steps=4)
7s 2s/step - loss: 1.7478 - categorical_accuracy: 0.7038
Why would the loss vary with the number of steps? I could guess some % due to statistical variations... not 4 fold increase!
If I try
x,y = next(validationGenerator)
nSamples = x.shape[0]
meanLoss = np.zeros(nSamples)
meanAcc = np.zeros(nSamples)
for pIdx in range(nSamples):
y_pred = model.predict(np.expand_dims(x[pIdx,:,:,:,:],axis=0))
meanAcc[pIdx]=np.mean(tf.keras.metrics.categorical_accuracy(np.expand_dims(y[pIdx,:,:,:,:],axis=0),y_pred))
meanLoss[pIdx]=np.mean(tf.keras.metrics.categorical_crossentropy(np.expand_dims(y[pIdx,:,:,:,:],axis=0),y_pred))
print(np.mean(meanAcc))
print(np.mean(meanLoss))
I get accuracy~85% and loss ~0.44. Which is what I expect from the previous fit, and it varies by vary little from one batch to the other. And these are the same exact numbers that I get if I do model.evaluate() with 1 step (using the same generator function).
However I need about 30 steps to run trough my whole training dataset. What should I do?
If I fit my already good model to this generator it indeed worsen the performances a lot (it goes from a nice segmentation of the image to uniform predictions of 25% for each of the 4 classes!!!!)
Any idea on where to debud the issue? I've also visually looked at the images produced by the generator and at the model predictions and everything looks correct (as testified by the numbers I found when evaluating using a single step). I've tried writing a minimal working example with a 2 layers model but... in it the issue does not happen.
UPDATE: Generators code
So, as I've been asked, these are the generators code. They're handwritten
def dataGen (X,Y_train):
patchS = 64 #set the size of the patch I extract
batchS = 16 #number of samples per batch
nSamples = X.shape[0] #get total number of samples
immSize = X.shape[1:] #get the shape of the iamge to crop
#Get 4 patches from each image
#extract them randomly, and in random patient order
patList = np.array(range(0,nSamples),dtype='int16')
patList = patList.reshape(nSamples,1)
patList = np.tile(patList,(4,2))
patList[:nSamples,0]=0 #Use this index to tell the code where to get the patch from
patList[nSamples:2*nSamples,0]=1
patList[2*nSamples:3*nSamples,0]=2
patList[3*nSamples:4*nSamples,0]=3
np.random.shuffle(patList)
patStart=0
Xout = np.zeros((batchS,patchS,patchS,patchS,immSize[3])) #allocate output vector
while True:
Yout = np.zeros((batchS,patchS,patchS,patchS)) #allocate vector of labels
for patIdx in range(batchS):
XSR = 32* (patList[patStart+patIdx,0]//2) #get the index of where to extract the patch
YSR = 32* (patList[patStart+patIdx,0]%2)
xStart = random.randrange(XSR,XSR+32) #get a patch randomly somewhere between a range
yStart = random.randrange(YSR,YSR+32)
zStart = random.randrange(0,26)
patInd = patList[patStart+patIdx,1]
Xout[patIdx,:,:,:,:] = X[patInd,xStart:(xStart+patchS),yStart:(yStart+patchS),zStart:(zStart+patchS),:]
Yout[patIdx,:,:,:] = Y_train[patInd,xStart:(xStart+patchS),yStart:(yStart+patchS),zStart:(zStart+patchS)]
if((patStart+patIdx)>(patList.shape[0]-2)):
np.random.shuffle(patList) #after going through the whole list restart
patStart=0
patStart = patStart+batchS
Yout = tf.keras.utils.to_categorical (Yout, num_classes=4, dtype='float32') #convert to one hot encoding
yield Xout, Yout

Answer 1

Posting the workaround I've found for the future person coming here from google.
Apparently the issue lies in how keras calls a handwritten generator. When it was called multiple times in a row by using evaluate(gen, steps=N) apparently it returned wrong outputs. There's no documentation around about how to address this or how a generator should be written.
I ended up writing my code using a tf.keras.utils.sequence class and the same previous code now works perfectly. No way to know why.

Answer 2

Here are different factors that affect loss & accuracy:
For Accuracy, we know that it measures the accuracy of the prediction: i.e. correct-classes /total-classes.
While loss tracks the inverse-confidence of the prediction.
A high Loss indicates that although the model is performing well with the prediction, It is becoming uncertain of the prediction it is making.
For example, For an image classification scenario, The image of a cat is passed into two models. Model A predicts {cat: 0.8, dog: 0.2} and model B predicts {cat: 0.6, dog: 0.4}.
Both models will score the same accuracy, but model B will have a higher loss.
On your evaluation part, Based on the documentation
Steps: Integer or None. Total number of steps (batches of samples) before declaring the evaluation round finished. Ignored with the default value of None. If x is a tf.data dataset and steps is None, 'evaluate' will run until the dataset is exhausted. This argument is not supported by array inputs.
So for simplify, it's getting the Nth batch of your validation samples.
It could be that the model prediction is becoming uncertain since the majority of the unknown data falls on those specific steps. which in your case, steps 2 & 3.
So, As the evaluation steps progress, The prediction becomes more uncertain leading to a higher loss.
You might need to retrain your model with more training samples but of course, you need to be careful since you might encounter overfitting.
In terms of data augmentation, you might wanna check this link
In Training Perspective, proper data augmentation is one of the factors that leads to good model performance.