Improve Accuracy: Polygon Annotations for Object Detection

Converting bounding box annotations to polygon annotations can significantly enhance the performance of object detection models, particularly for objects with irregular shapes. Polygon annotations provide more precise localization than traditional bounding boxes, which can capture unnecessary space around objects and potentially hinder model performance. The blog post discusses experiments using the YOLOv8 architecture, demonstrating that models trained with polygon annotations consistently achieve higher mean average precision (mAP) scores compared to those using bounding boxes. Additionally, employing pretrained weights and applying augmentations such as rotation, saturation, and cutout further improve model performance, with polygon annotations benefiting more from these techniques. The experiments highlight how these approaches can increase the robustness and accuracy of object detection models in various real-world applications, including autonomous driving and surveillance.