European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields (Dec 2022)
Application of transfer learning to neutrino interaction classification
Abstract
Abstract Training deep neural networks using simulations typically requires very large numbers of simulated events. This can be a large computational burden and a limitation in the performance of the deep learning algorithm when insufficient numbers of events can be produced. We investigate the use of transfer learning, where a set of simulated images are used to fine tune a model trained on generic image recognition tasks, to the specific use case of neutrino interaction classification in a liquid argon time projection chamber. A ResNet18, pre-trained on photographic images, was fine-tuned using simulated neutrino images and when trained with one hundred thousand training events reached an F1 score of 0.896 $$\,\pm \,$$ ± 0.002 compared to 0.836 $$\,\pm \,$$ ± 0.004 from a randomly-initialised network trained with the same training sample. The transfer-learned networks also demonstrate lower bias as a function of energy and more balanced performance across different interaction types.