Comparison between layer-to-layer network training and conventional network training using Convolutional Neural Networks

Title: Comparison between layer-to-layer network training and conventional network training using Convolutional Neural Networks Abstract: Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are widely used in various applications due to their effectiveness in extracting features from data. However, the performance of a CNN heavily depends on its architecture and training process. In this study, we propose a layer-to-layer training method and compare its performance with the conventional training method. In the layer-to-layer training approach, we treat a portion of the early layers as a student network and the later layers as a teacher network. During each training step, we incrementally train the student network to learn from the output of the teacher network, and vice versa. We evaluate this approach on a VGG16 network without pre-trained ImageNet weights and a regular CNN model. Our experiments show that the layer-to-layer training method outperforms the conventional training method for both models. Specifically, we achieve higher accuracy on the test set for the VGG16 network and the CNN model using layer-to-layer training compared to the conventional training method. Overall, our study highlights the importance of layer-wise training in CNNs and suggests that layer-to-layer training can be a promising approach for improving the accuracy of CNNs.