Person re-identification using CNN features learned from combination of attributes

This paper presents fine-tuned CNN features for person re-identification. Recently, features extracted from top layers of pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) on a large annotated dataset, e.g., ImageNet, have been proven to be strong off-the-shelf descriptors for various recognition tasks. However, large disparity among the pre-trained task, i.e., ImageNet classification, and the target task, i.e., person image matching, limits performances of the CNN features for person re-identification. In this paper, we improve the CNN features by conducting a fine-tuning on a pedestrian attribute dataset. In addition to the classification loss for multiple pedestrian attribute labels, we propose new labels by combining different attribute labels and use them for an additional classification loss function. The combination attribute loss forces CNN to distinguish more person specific information, yielding more discriminative features. After extracting features from the learned CNN, we apply conventional metric learning on a target re-identification dataset for further increasing discriminative power. Experimental results on four challenging person re-identification datasets (VIPeR, CUHK, PRID450S and GRID) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed features.