Exploring Synergistic Ensemble Learning: Uniting CNNs, MLP-Mixers, and Vision Transformers to Enhance Image Classification

Abstract

In recent years, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), MLP-mixers, and Vision Transformers have risen to prominence as leading neural architectures in image classification. Prior research has underscored the distinct advantages of each architecture, and there is growing evidence that combining modules from different architectures can boost performance. In this study, we build upon and improve previous work exploring the complementarity between different architectures. Instead of heuristically merging modules from various architectures through trial and error, we preserve the integrity of each architecture and combine them using ensemble techniques. By maintaining the distinctiveness of each architecture, we aim to explore their inherent complementarity more deeply and with implicit isolation. This approach provides a more systematic understanding of their individual strengths. In addition to uncovering insights into architectural complementarity, we showcase the effectiveness of even basic ensemble methods that combine models from diverse architectures. These methods outperform ensembles comprised of similar architectures. Our straightforward ensemble framework serves as a foundational strategy for blending complementary architectures, offering a solid starting point for further investigations into the unique strengths and synergies among different architectures and their ensembles in image classification. A direct outcome of this work is the creation of an ensemble of classification networks that surpasses the accuracy of the previous state-of-the-art single classification network on ImageNet, setting a new benchmark, all while requiring less overall latency.