Image data augmentation techniques based on deep learning: A survey

In recent years, deep learning (DL) techniques have achieved remarkable success in various fields of computer vision. This progress was attributed to the vast amounts of data utilized to train these models, as they facilitated the learning of more intricate and detailed feature information about target objects, leading to improved model performance. However, in most real-world tasks, it was challenging to gather sufficient data for model training. Insufficient datasets often resulted in models prone to overfitting. To address this issue and enhance model performance, generalization ability, and mitigate overfitting in data-limited scenarios, image data augmentation methods have been proposed. These methods generated synthetic samples to augment the original dataset, emerging as a preferred strategy to boost model performance when data was scarce. This review first introduced commonly used and highly effective image data augmentation techniques, along with a detailed analysis of their advantages and disadvantages. Second, this review presented several datasets frequently employed for evaluating the performance of image data augmentation methods and examined how advanced augmentation techniques can enhance model performance. Third, this review discussed the applications and performance of data augmentation techniques in various computer vision domains. Finally, this review provided an outlook on potential future research directions for image data augmentation methods.