Creating an image summary only for a subset of validation set images using Tensorflow Estimator API - tensorflow

Question

I'm trying to add image summary operations to visualize how well my network manages to reconstruct inputs from the validation set. However, since there are too many images in the validation set I would only like to plot a small subset of them.
I managed to achieve this with manual training loop, but I struggle to achieve the same with the new Tensorflow Estimator/Experiment/Datasets API. Has anyone done something like this?

Answer 1

The Experiment and Estimator are high level TensorFlow APIs. Although you could probably solve your issue with a hook, if you want more control on what's happening during the training process, it may be easier not to use these APIs.
That said, you can still use the Dataset API which will bring you a lot of useful features.
To solve your problem with the Dataset API, you will need to switch between train and validation datasets in your training loop.
One way to do that is to use a feedable iterator. See here for more details:
https://www.tensorflow.org/programmers_guide/datasets
You can also see a full example switching between training and validation with the Dataset API in this notebook.
In brief, after having created your train_dataset and your val_dataset, your training loop could be something like this:
# create TensorFlow Iterator objects
training_iterator = val_dataset.make_initializable_iterator()
val_iterator = val_dataset.make_initializable_iterator()
with tf.Session() as sess:
# Initialize variables
init = tf.global_variables_initializer()
sess.run(init)
# Create training data and validation data handles
training_handle = sess.run(training_iterator.string_handle())
validation_handle = sess.run(val_iterator.string_handle())
for epoch in range(number_of_epochs):
# Tell iterator to go to beginning of dataset
sess.run(training_iterator.initializer)
print ("Starting epoch: ", epoch)
# iterate over the training dataset and train
while True:
try:
sess.run(train_op, feed_dict={handle: training_handle})
except tf.errors.OutOfRangeError:
# End of epoch
break
# Tell validation iterator to go to beginning of dataset
sess.run(val_iterator.initializer)
# run validation on only 10 examples
for i in range(10):
my_value = sess.run(my_validation_op, feed_dict={handle: validation_handle}))
# Do whatever you want with my_value
...

Answer 2

I figured out a solution that uses Estimator/Experiment API.
First you need to modify your Dataset input to not only provide labels and features, but also some form of an identifier for each sample (in my case it was a filename). Then in the hyperparameters dictionary (params argument) you need to specify which of the validation samples you want to plot. You also will have to pass the model_dir in those parameters. For example:
params = tf.contrib.training.HParams(
model_dir=model_dir,
images_to_plot=["100307_EMOTION.nii.gz", "100307_FACE-SHAPE.nii.gz",
"100307_GAMBLING.nii.gz", "100307_RELATIONAL.nii.gz",
"100307_SOCIAL.nii.gz"]
)
learn_runner.run(
experiment_fn=experiment_fn,
run_config=run_config,
schedule="train_and_evaluate",
hparams=params
)
Having this set up you can create conditional Summary operations in your model_fn and an evaluation hook to include them in your outputs.
if mode == tf.contrib.learn.ModeKeys.EVAL:
summaries = []
for image_to_plot in params.images_to_plot:
is_to_plot = tf.equal(tf.squeeze(filenames), image_to_plot)
summary = tf.cond(is_to_plot,
lambda: tf.summary.image('predicted', predictions),
lambda: tf.summary.histogram("ignore_me", [0]),
name="%s_predicted" % image_to_plot)
summaries.append(summary)
evaluation_hooks = [tf.train.SummarySaverHook(
save_steps=1,
output_dir=os.path.join(params.model_dir, "eval"),
summary_op=tf.summary.merge(summaries))]
else:
evaluation_hooks = None
Note that the summaries have to be conditional - we are either plotting an image (computationally expensive) or saving a constant (computationally cheap). I opted for using histogram versus scalar in for the dummy summaries to avoid cluttering my tensorboard dashboard.
Finally you need to pass the hook in the return object of your `model_fn'
return tf.estimator.EstimatorSpec(
mode=mode,
predictions=predictions,
loss=loss,
train_op=train_op,
evaluation_hooks=evaluation_hooks
)
Please note that this only works when your batch size is 1 when evaluating the model (which should not be a problem).