What is the use and purpose of image annotation in object detection?

Annotation of images is crucial to help machines or computer vision models identify and interpret the objects correctly. Annotation is done with predetermined labels with the help of expert human annotators. In simple words, annotation of images is all about adding metadata to a dataset, which can help machines to recognize the specific given objects in the image. An annotator tags objects within images and makes them more informative so that the machine learning algorithms can interpret the data, and get trained to solve real-life challenges.

Image annotation can be used in various industries. Some of the use cases are given below:

1. Autonomous vehicles for gesture recognition, Advance Driver Assistance System (ADAS) features.
2. Drones for road mapping and Object Detection Aerial Imagery (ODAI)
3. Retail sector, supply-chain management.
4. AR/VR for semantic understanding, facial recognition and advanced object tracking.
5. In Agriculture (disease detection and crop identification)
6. In eCommerce for image categorization, object detection.

Importance of Image Annotation

Image annotations are highly used for systems that are dependent on computer vision. It is because of the annotations of images process that an autonomous car can differentiate between a pedestrian, a signal and many more things on the road so that the car can make appropriate driving decisions. For annotating the image perfectly and accurately, the system has to be powerful because it has to process millions of images to understand different objects in a given image.

Therefore, the entire process demands high precision, knowledge, time, and investment and outsourcing image annotation services to a reputed partner increase productivity and results. And for this, Anolytics provides the best and high-quality image annotation services in the market. Anolytics.ai is a leading provider of labelling and annotation services that are outsourced. The projects are marked up by highly skilled professionals who delivered the given task on time and with perfection. The image annotation service of Anolytics is spread over a wide range of industries working on AI-based or machine learning-based business models. From eCommerce to retail and healthcare, the company cover almost every industry/sector.

Types and Techniques

There are several types of image annotations and each one is different in how it classifies features or areas of a particular image. like:

1. Image classification: In this form of annotation, the annotators train the model of identifying the presence of similar objects based on similar collections of objects that it’s seen before.
2. Object detection: This type of image annotation helps in identifying the presence, location, and several objects in an image. For example, a common street scene can be separately annotated with signals, pedestrians, vehicles, and other objects.
3. Segmentation. This section can be further divided into two types of image segmentation.

A. Semantic segmentation: which outlines the boundaries between similar objects.

B. Instance segmentation: which marks the occurrence of every individual object within an object.

Uses of Image Annotations

Annotated images are used in several verticals as it helps AI models to facilitate machine recognition through computer vision technology.

With the help of computer vision technology, one can easily recognizable and detectable various things or objects for the appropriate predictions. Simply put, the annotated images are used for training purposes for machine algorithms. Then the algorithms enable machines to identify and interpret the given set of data.

There are several techniques used for annotating the images like Semantic Segmentation, Polygon Annotation, Bounding Box, Landmarking, 3D Cuboid, and others. All these techniques not only help businesses to add value but also gives perfect results which can be used in long run.

Anolytics offers data, image, text and video annotation service for computer vision and machine learning process. Companies working on AI-based machine learning technologies and looking to develop a fully-functional model can get high quality annotat