Open Access

This thesis investigates the critical role of data quality in computer vision, particularly in the realm of pedestrian detection. The proliferation of deep learning methods has emphasised the importance of large datasets for model training, while the quality of these datasets is equally crucial. Ambiguity in annotations, arising from factors like mislabelling, inaccurate bounding box geometry and annotator disagreements, poses significant challenges to the reliability and robustness of the pedestrian detection models and their evaluation. This work aims to explore the effects of ambiguous data on model performance with a focus on identifying and separating ambiguous instances, employing an ambiguity measure utilizing annotator estimations of object visibility and identity. Through accurate experimentation and analysis, trade-offs between data cleanliness and representativeness, noise removal and retention of valuable data emerged, elucidating their impact on performance metrics like the log average miss-rate, recall and precision. Furthermore, a strong correlation between ambiguity and occlusion was discovered with higher ambiguity corresponding to greater occlusion prevalence. The EuroCity Persons dataset served as the primary dataset, revealing a significant proportion of ambiguous instances with approximately 8.6% ambiguity in the training dataset and 7.3% in the validation set. Results demonstrated that removing ambiguous data improves the log average miss-rate, particularly by reducing the false positive detections. Augmentation of the training data with samples from neighbouring classes enhanced the recall but diminished precision. Error correction of wrong false positives and false negatives significantly impacts model evaluation results, as evidenced by shifts in the ECP leaderboard rankings. By systematically addressing ambiguity, this thesis lays the foundation for enhancing the reliability of computer vision systems in real-world applications, motivating the prioritisation of developing robust strategies to identify, quantify and address ambiguity.