A Survey of Image Synthesis Methods for Visual Machine Learning

Image synthesis designed for machine learning applications provides the means to efficiently generate large quantities of training data while controlling the generation process to provide the best distribution and content variety. With the demands of deep learning applications, synthetic data have the potential of becoming a vital component in the training pipeline. Over the last decade, a wide variety of training data generation methods has been demonstrated. The potential of future development calls to bring these together for comparison and categorization. This survey provides a comprehensive list of the existing image synthesis methods for visual machine learning. These are categorized in the context of image generation, using a taxonomy based on modelling and rendering, while a classification is also made concerning the computer vision applications they are used. We focus on the computer graphics aspects of the methods, to promote future image generation for machine learning. Finally, each method is assessed in terms of quality and reported performance, providing a hint on its expected learning potential. The report serves as a comprehensive reference, targeting both groups of the applications and data development sides. A list of all methods and papers reviewed herein can be found at https://computergraphics.on.liu.se/image_synthesis_methods_for_visual_machine_learning/.Funding agencies: strategic research environment ELLIIT; Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) - Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation