# Image classification optimization technology based on differentiable neural architecture search improvement model

**Authors:** Yuxuan Ji, Wenshu Li, Nan Yu

PMC · DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329480 · PLOS One · 2025-08-13

## TL;DR

This paper improves image classification by enhancing differentiable neural architecture search with attention mechanisms and structural changes, achieving high accuracy and efficiency.

## Contribution

Introduces an improved differentiable NAS model with attention and residual structures to enhance local and long-distance information capture.

## Key findings

- The improved model achieved 97.2% accuracy on CIFAR-10 after 600 training rounds.
- Runtime memory usage on CIFAR-100 decreased by 44.56% compared to the baseline.
- On ImageNet, the model achieved 94.01% accuracy with 4.8MB parameters and 3.7G floating-point operations.

## Abstract

Image classification, as the core task of computer vision, has broad application value in fields such as medical diagnosis and intelligent transportation.However, the ability of differentiable neural architecture to search (NAS) for local information is weak, which limits the accuracy and long-distance information capture capability of the algorithm. Therefore, based on this, the study introduces visual attention mechanism and proposes an improved model that replaces the original convolution operator and adds residual structure in the macro structure to enhance the model’s information acquisition ability and classification accuracy. The research results show that after 600 rounds of training on the CIFAR-10 dataset, the final accuracy of the improved model reached 97.2%. The runtime memory usage on the CIFAR-100 dataset is only 44.52%, a decrease of 44.56% compared to the baseline model. In the testing on the ImageNet dataset, the classification accuracy of the research model is 94.01, the search parameter required is only 4.8MB, the search time is shortened to 0.5d, and the minimum number of floating-point operations is 3.7G, significantly better than other mainstream algorithms. The above results indicate that the research method can effectively solve the shortcomings of traditional differentiable neural architecture search in local and remote information acquisition capabilities, providing important technical support for improving the accuracy and efficiency of image classification technology.

## Full-text entities

- **Diseases:** TCD (MESH:D015794), pest (MESH:D029021), NAS (MESH:D015441), plant disease (MESH:D010939)
- **Chemicals:** DARTS (-)
- **Species:** Homo sapiens (human, species) [taxon 9606]

## Full text

_Full body text omitted from this summary view._ Fetch the complete paper as Markdown: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12349122/full.md

## Figures

11 figures with captions in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12349122/full.md

## References

31 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12349122/full.md

---
Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12349122