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YAML Experiment Example Files

Although users may directly use the CLI to conduct experiments and generate saliency maps with SMILER, the CLI additionally supports experiment specification using YAML. This is the recommended method of operation, as it allows a user to maintain explicit records of experimental settings and protocols through stored YAML specification files.

YAML is a data serialization language designed to be easily written, read, and understood by humans. SMILER uses YAML files to specify experiments. These YAML specification files are composed of two sections: an experiment, which provides global specification details, and one or more experimental runs, which provide details for a specific algorithm call.

experiment:
  name: Simple Example
  description: An illustrative example of how to set up SMILER YAML experiments.
  input_path: /tmp/test_in
  base_output_path: /tmp/test_out
  parameters:
    do_smoothing: none

runs:
  - algorithm: AIM
    output_path: /tmp/AIM_smoothing
    parameters:
      do_smoothing: default

  - algorithm: AIM
    output_path: /tmp/AIM_no_smoothing

  - algorithm: DGII

  - algorithm: oSALICON
    parameters:
      color_space: LAB

Once you have your experiment described as a YAML file, you can run it with the following command:

./smiler run -e experiment.yaml

The name and description fields are primarily for user records, and facilitate organization and sharing of experimental protocols by providing a lightweight document which can easily be created and stored for each experiment conducted and run on any system with SMILER installed. input_path is the folder which contains the images to be processed in this particular experiment. base_output_path provides a root location for output maps to be saved, which by default will be placed in a subfolder at this location named for the algorithm that produced it (in the above example, DGII and oSALICON will be saved in /tmp/test_out/DGII and /tmp/test_out/oSALICON respectively).

YAML specification introduces an additional layer to parameter precedence. The parameters field within the experiment field provides a way to set customized values which will be used for all runs, but these may be overridden for a specific run by adding a parameters field to that run. In the above example, all runs are set to be performed without smoothing based on the parameter specification under the experiment field, but the first run using AIM overrides this specification and instead uses default smoothing parameters. In this case, both AIM runs are include output_path fields which will override the default behaviour using base_output_path. In the provided example, DGII will be run without any additional specifications beyond those provided in the experiment field, while oSALICON will be run with an additional specification of the color_space parameter (since there is no color_space specification under experiment, all other runs will use the built-in SMILER default: RGB).