Deep Metric Learning With Tuplet Margin Loss

Abstract

Deep metric learning, in which the loss function plays a key role, has proven to be extremely useful in visual recognition tasks. However, existing deep metric learning loss functions such as contrastive loss and triplet loss usually rely on delicately selected samples (pairs or triplets) for fast convergence. In this paper, we propose a new deep metric learning loss function, tuplet margin loss, using randomly selected samples from each mini-batch. Specifically, the proposed tuplet margin loss implicitly up-weights hard samples and down-weights easy samples, while a slack margin in angular space is introduced to mitigate the problem of overfitting on the hardest sample. Furthermore, we address the problem of intra-pair variation by disentangling class-specific information to improve the generalizability of tuplet margin loss. Experimental results on three widely used deep metric learning datasets, CARS196, CUB200-2011, and Stanford Online Products, demonstrate significant improvements over existing deep metric learning methods.