What is Cutout / Random Erasing?

easy

Answer

$During training, mask a random rectangular region of the input image with zeros (Cutout) or random noise (Random Erasing).$
$Forces the network to look at the whole image rather than one salient region — improves robustness to occlusion.$
$Simple, cheap, effective.$
$Standard in vision recipes since 2017; combines well with Mixup / CutMix.$

Check yourself — multiple choice

Removes the label
Mask a random rectangular region with 0 or noise — forces robust global features and helps occlusion
Same as Mixup
Only used for text

Cutout / Random Erasing: mask a random rectangle → occlusion robustness.

#augmentation#regularization

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