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An analysis of generative adversarial networks and variants for image synthesis on MNIST dataset

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Abstract

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are most popular generative frameworks that have achieved compelling performance. They follow an adversarial approach where two deep models generator and discriminator compete with each other. They have been used for many applications especially for image synthesis because of their capability to generate high quality images. In past few years, different variants of GAN have proposed and they produced high quality results for image generation. This paper conducts an analysis of working and architecture of GAN and its popular variants for image generation in detail. In addition, we summarize and compare these models according to different parameters such as architecture, training method, learning type, benefits and performance metrics. Finally, we apply all these methods on a benchmark MNIST dataset, which contains handwritten digits and compare qualitative and quantitative results. The evaluation is based on quality of generated images, classification accuracy, discriminator loss, generator loss and computational time of these models. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive information about GAN and its various models in the field of image synthesis. Our main contribution in this work is critical comparison of popular GAN variants for image generation on MNIST dataset. Moreover, this paper gives insights regarding existing limitations and challenges faced by GAN and discusses associated future research work.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (No.61602215, No.61672268), and the science foundation of Jiangsu province (No.BK20150527).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Communication Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

    Keyang Cheng, Rabia Tahir & Lubamba Kasangu Eric

  2. Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Brunel University, London, UK

    Maozhen Li

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Correspondence to Rabia Tahir.

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Cheng, K., Tahir, R., Eric, L.K. et al. An analysis of generative adversarial networks and variants for image synthesis on MNIST dataset. Multimed Tools Appl 79, 13725–13752 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08600-2

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