YOLO-T: Multitarget Intelligent Recognition Method for X-ray Images Based on the YOLO and Transformer Models

Abstract

X-ray security inspection processes have a low degree of automation, long detection times, and are subject to misjudgment due to occlusion. To address these problems, this paper proposes a multi-objective intelligent recognition method for X-ray images based on the YOLO deep learning network and an optimized transformer structure (YOLO-T). We also construct the GDXray-Expanded X-ray detection dataset, which contains multiple types of dangerous goods. Using this dataset, we evaluated several versions of the YOLO deep learning network model and compared the results to those of the proposed YOLO-T model. The proposed YOLO-T method demonstrated higher accuracy for multitarget and hidden-target detection tasks. On the GDXray-Expanded dataset, the maximum mAP of the proposed YOLO-T model was 97.73%, which is 7.66%, 16.47%, and 7.11% higher than that obtained by the YOLO v2, YOLO v3, and YOLO v4 models, respectively. Thus, we believe that the proposed YOLO-T network has good application prospects in X-ray security inspection technologies. In all kinds of security detection scenarios using X-ray security detectors, the model proposed in this paper can quickly and accurately identify dangerous goods, which has broad application value.