CNN – If We Are Flattening The Feature Map Aren’t We Loose The Spatial Information?
Syllabus:
- What Happens During Flattening?
- Loss of Spatial Information
- Why Flattening is Used Despite This Limitation?
- Alternatives to Flattening
- Example
- Conclusion
Answer:
- Yes, flattening a feature map in a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) leads to the loss of spatial information because the structured 2D or 3D representation of the features is converted into a 1D vector.
- While this is acceptable for certain tasks (like classification), it does come with trade-offs.
What Happens During Flattering?
Loss Of Spatial Information:
Why Flattening is Used Despite This Limitation:
Alternatives to Flattening:
Example Of Flattering:
Conclusion:

