Learning and predicting the unknown class using evidential deep learning

In practical deep-learning applications, such as medical image analysis, autonomous driving, and traffic simulation, the uncertainty of a classification model’s output is critical. Evidential deep learning (EDL) can output this uncertainty for the prediction; however, its accuracy depends on a user-defined threshold, and it cannot handle training data with unknown classes that are unexpectedly contaminated or deliberately mixed for better classification of unknown class. To address these limitations, I propose a classification method called modified-EDL that extends classical EDL such that it outputs a prediction, i.e. an input belongs to a collective unknown class along with a probability. Although other methods handle unknown classes by creating new unknown classes and attempting to learn each class efficiently, the proposed m-EDL outputs, in a natural way, the “uncertainty of the prediction” of classical EDL and uses the output as the probability of an unknown class. Although classical EDL can also classify both known and unknown classes, experiments on three datasets from different domains demonstrated that m-EDL outperformed EDL on known classes when there were instances of unknown classes. Moreover, extensive experiments under different conditions established that m-EDL can predict unknown classes even when the unknown classes in the training and test data have different properties. If unknown class data are to be mixed intentionally during training to increase the discrimination accuracy of unknown classes, it is necessary to mix such data that the characteristics of the mixed data are as close as possible to those of known class data. This ability extends the range of practical applications that can benefit from deep learning-based classification and prediction models.