Neuron Efficiency Index: An Empirical Method for Optimizing Parameters in Deep Learning

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have undeniably achieved groundbreaking success across diverse applications. Nevertheless, their complex architectures inherently lead to substantial computational demands and memory prerequisites. To surmount these challenges, this research paper introduces a pioneering approach designed to amplify DNN efficiency via a unique iterative pruning technique Neuron Efficiency Index (NEI), that considers activation frequency of each neuron, class sensitivity and redundancy in the dense layer neurons. The central objective of this method is to curtail the computational burden of the model, all the while ensuring that performance remains intact and enhanced. The proposed technique is used to prune state-of-the-art architectures and comprehensive comparison is presented on benchmark dataset MNIST and CIFAR-10. The evaluation presents that proposed NEI improves the model accuracy while reducing the computations and complexity of the architecture. The work contributes to the field of neural network optimization.