Empirical Evidence for Simply Connected Decision Regions in Image Classifiers
Abstract
The topology of a classifier's decision regions determines how inputs with the same predicted label can be connected and deformed without changing that prediction. Prior empirical work constructed paths between same-label images within a single region, but did not examine whether loops bound surfaces within that region. We investigate this question using adaptive quadrilateral meshes with targeted repair of off-label interior vertices, while holding the same-label boundary loop fixed. A finite-resolution acceptance criterion distinguishes completed constructions from those left unresolved at the refinement ceiling. Across the pretrained classifiers studied, every tested loop admits an accepted filling. Construction effort varies by orders of magnitude within classes and is greater for mean-score-adjusted randomly initialised classifiers than for trained classifiers. An analytic control with a known hole leaves winding loops unresolved at the tested hole radii at or above the resolution threshold. These results provide empirical evidence consistent with simply connected decision regions at the tested resolution.
