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Data schemas to train computer vision models with automated machine learning (v1)

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APPLIES TO: Python SDK azureml v1

Important

Some of the Azure CLI commands in this article use the azure-cli-ml, or v1, extension for Azure Machine Learning. Support for the v1 extension will end on September 30, 2025. You will be able to install and use the v1 extension until that date.

We recommend that you transition to the ml, or v2, extension before September 30, 2025. For more information on the v2 extension, see Azure ML CLI extension and Python SDK v2.

Important

This feature is currently in public preview. This preview version is provided without a service-level agreement. Certain features might not be supported or might have constrained capabilities. For more information, see Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.

Learn how to format your JSONL files for data consumption in automated ML experiments for computer vision tasks during training and inference.

Data schema for training

Azure Machine Learning AutoML for Images requires input image data to be prepared in JSONL (JSON Lines) format. This section describes input data formats or schema for image classification multi-class, image classification multi-label, object detection, and instance segmentation. We'll also provide a sample of final training or validation JSON Lines file.

Image classification (binary/multi-class)

Input data format/schema in each JSON Line:

{
   "image_url":"AmlDatastore://data_directory/../Image_name.image_format",
   "image_details":{
      "format":"image_format",
      "width":"image_width",
      "height":"image_height"
   },
   "label":"class_name",
}
Key Description Example
image_url Image location in Azure Machine Learning datastore
Required, String		 "AmlDatastore://data_directory/Image_01.jpg"
image_details Image details
Optional, Dictionary		 "image_details":{"format": "jpg", "width": "400px", "height": "258px"}
format Image type (all the available Image formats in Pillow library are supported)
Optional, String from {"jpg", "jpeg", "png", "jpe", "jfif","bmp", "tif", "tiff"}		 "jpg" or "jpeg" or "png" or "jpe" or "jfif" or "bmp" or "tif" or "tiff"
width Width of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "400px" or 400
height Height of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "200px" or 200
label Class/label of the image
Required, String		 "cat"

Example of a JSONL file for multi-class image classification:

{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_01.jpg", "image_details":{"format": "jpg", "width": "400px", "height": "258px"}, "label": "can"}
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_02.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "397px", "height": "296px"}, "label": "milk_bottle"}
.
.
.
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_n.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "1024px", "height": "768px"}, "label": "water_bottle"}

Image example for image classification multi-class.

Image classification multi-label

The following is an example of input data format/schema in each JSON Line for image classification.

{
   "image_url":"AmlDatastore://data_directory/../Image_name.image_format",
   "image_details":{
      "format":"image_format",
      "width":"image_width",
      "height":"image_height"
   },
   "label":[
      "class_name_1",
      "class_name_2",
      "class_name_3",
      "...",
      "class_name_n"
        
   ]
}
Key Description Example
image_url Image location in Azure Machine Learning datastore
Required, String		 "AmlDatastore://data_directory/Image_01.jpg"
image_details Image details
Optional, Dictionary		 "image_details":{"format": "jpg", "width": "400px", "height": "258px"}
format Image type (all the Image formats available in Pillow library are supported)
Optional, String from {"jpg", "jpeg", "png", "jpe", "jfif", "bmp", "tif", "tiff"}		 "jpg" or "jpeg" or "png" or "jpe" or "jfif" or "bmp" or "tif" or "tiff"
width Width of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "400px" or 400
height Height of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "200px" or 200
label List of classes/labels in the image
Required, List of Strings		 ["cat","dog"]

Example of a JSONL file for Image Classification Multi-label:

{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_01.jpg", "image_details":{"format": "jpg", "width": "400px", "height": "258px"}, "label": ["can"]}
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_02.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "397px", "height": "296px"}, "label": ["can","milk_bottle"]}
.
.
.
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_n.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "1024px", "height": "768px"}, "label": ["carton","milk_bottle","water_bottle"]}

Image example for image classification multi-label.

Object detection

The following is an example JSONL file for object detection.

{
   "image_url":"AmlDatastore://data_directory/../Image_name.image_format",
   "image_details":{
      "format":"image_format",
      "width":"image_width",
      "height":"image_height"
   },
   "label":[
      {
         "label":"class_name_1",
         "topX":"xmin/width",
         "topY":"ymin/height",
         "bottomX":"xmax/width",
         "bottomY":"ymax/height",
         "isCrowd":"isCrowd"
      },
      {
         "label":"class_name_2",
         "topX":"xmin/width",
         "topY":"ymin/height",
         "bottomX":"xmax/width",
         "bottomY":"ymax/height",
         "isCrowd":"isCrowd"
      },
      "..."
   ]
}

Here,

  • xmin = x coordinate of top-left corner of bounding box
  • ymin = y coordinate of top-left corner of bounding box
  • xmax = x coordinate of bottom-right corner of bounding box
  • ymax = y coordinate of bottom-right corner of bounding box
Key Description Example
image_url Image location in Azure Machine Learning datastore
Required, String		 "AmlDatastore://data_directory/Image_01.jpg"
image_details Image details
Optional, Dictionary		 "image_details":{"format": "jpg", "width": "400px", "height": "258px"}
format Image type (all the Image formats available in Pillow library are supported. But for YOLO only image formats allowed by opencv are supported)
Optional, String from {"jpg", "jpeg", "png", "jpe", "jfif", "bmp", "tif", "tiff"}		 "jpg" or "jpeg" or "png" or "jpe" or "jfif" or "bmp" or "tif" or "tiff"
width Width of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "499px" or 499
height Height of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "665px" or 665
label (outer key) List of bounding boxes, where each box is a dictionary of label, topX, topY, bottomX, bottomY, isCrowd their top-left and bottom-right coordinates
Required, List of dictionaries		 [{"label": "cat", "topX": 0.260, "topY": 0.406, "bottomX": 0.735, "bottomY": 0.701, "isCrowd": 0}]
label (inner key) Class/label of the object in the bounding box
Required, String		 "cat"
topX Ratio of x coordinate of top-left corner of the bounding box and width of the image
Required, Float in the range [0,1]		 0.260
topY Ratio of y coordinate of top-left corner of the bounding box and height of the image
Required, Float in the range [0,1]		 0.406
bottomX Ratio of x coordinate of bottom-right corner of the bounding box and width of the image
Required, Float in the range [0,1]		 0.735
bottomY Ratio of y coordinate of bottom-right corner of the bounding box and height of the image
Required, Float in the range [0,1]		 0.701
isCrowd Indicates whether the bounding box is around the crowd of objects. If this special flag is set, we skip this particular bounding box when calculating the metric.
Optional, Bool		 0

Example of a JSONL file for object detection:

{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_01.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "499px", "height": "666px"}, "label": [{"label": "can", "topX": 0.260, "topY": 0.406, "bottomX": 0.735, "bottomY": 0.701, "isCrowd": 0}]}
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_02.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "499px", "height": "666px"}, "label": [{"label": "carton", "topX": 0.172, "topY": 0.153, "bottomX": 0.432, "bottomY": 0.659, "isCrowd": 0}, {"label": "milk_bottle", "topX": 0.300, "topY": 0.566, "bottomX": 0.891, "bottomY": 0.735, "isCrowd": 0}]}
.
.
.
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_n.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "499px", "height": "666px"}, "label": [{"label": "carton", "topX": 0.0180, "topY": 0.297, "bottomX": 0.380, "bottomY": 0.836, "isCrowd": 0}, {"label": "milk_bottle", "topX": 0.454, "topY": 0.348, "bottomX": 0.613, "bottomY": 0.683, "isCrowd": 0}, {"label": "water_bottle", "topX": 0.667, "topY": 0.279, "bottomX": 0.841, "bottomY": 0.615, "isCrowd": 0}]}

Image example for object detection.

Instance segmentation

For instance segmentation, automated ML only support polygon as input and output, no masks.

The following is an example JSONL file for instance segmentation.

{
   "image_url":"AmlDatastore://data_directory/../Image_name.image_format",
   "image_details":{
      "format":"image_format",
      "width":"image_width",
      "height":"image_height"
   },
   "label":[
      {
         "label":"class_name",
         "isCrowd":"isCrowd",
         "polygon":[["x1", "y1", "x2", "y2", "x3", "y3", "...", "xn", "yn"]]
      }
   ]
}
Key Description Example
image_url Image location in Azure Machine Learning datastore
Required, String		 "AmlDatastore://data_directory/Image_01.jpg"
image_details Image details
Optional, Dictionary		 "image_details":{"format": "jpg", "width": "400px", "height": "258px"}
format Image type
Optional, String from {"jpg", "jpeg", "png", "jpe", "jfif", "bmp", "tif", "tiff" }		 "jpg" or "jpeg" or "png" or "jpe" or "jfif" or "bmp" or "tif" or "tiff"
width Width of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "499px" or 499
height Height of the image
Optional, String or Positive Integer		 "665px" or 665
label (outer key) List of masks, where each mask is a dictionary of label, isCrowd, polygon coordinates
Required, List of dictionaries		 [{"label": "can", "isCrowd": 0, "polygon": [[0.577, 0.689,
0.562, 0.681,
0.559, 0.686]]}]
label (inner key) Class/label of the object in the mask
Required, String		 "cat"
isCrowd Indicates whether the mask is around the crowd of objects
Optional, Bool		 0
polygon Polygon coordinates for the object
Required, List of list for multiple segments of the same instance. Float values in the range [0,1]		 [[0.577, 0.689, 0.567, 0.689, 0.559, 0.686]]

Example of a JSONL file for Instance Segmentation:

{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_01.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "499px", "height": "666px"}, "label": [{"label": "can", "isCrowd": 0, "polygon": [[0.577, 0.689, 0.567, 0.689, 0.559, 0.686, 0.380, 0.593, 0.304, 0.555, 0.294, 0.545, 0.290, 0.534, 0.274, 0.512, 0.2705, 0.496, 0.270, 0.478, 0.284, 0.453, 0.308, 0.432, 0.326, 0.423, 0.356, 0.415, 0.418, 0.417, 0.635, 0.493, 0.683, 0.507, 0.701, 0.518, 0.709, 0.528, 0.713, 0.545, 0.719, 0.554, 0.719, 0.579, 0.713, 0.597, 0.697, 0.621, 0.695, 0.629, 0.631, 0.678, 0.619, 0.683, 0.595, 0.683, 0.577, 0.689]]}]}
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_02.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "499px", "height": "666px"}, "label": [{"label": "carton", "isCrowd": 0, "polygon": [[0.240, 0.65, 0.234, 0.654, 0.230, 0.647, 0.210, 0.512, 0.202, 0.403, 0.182, 0.267, 0.184, 0.243, 0.180, 0.166, 0.186, 0.159, 0.198, 0.156, 0.396, 0.162, 0.408, 0.169, 0.406, 0.217, 0.414, 0.249, 0.422, 0.262, 0.422, 0.569, 0.342, 0.569, 0.334, 0.572, 0.320, 0.585, 0.308, 0.624, 0.306, 0.648, 0.240, 0.657]]}, {"label": "milk_bottle",  "isCrowd": 0, "polygon": [[0.675, 0.732, 0.635, 0.731, 0.621, 0.725, 0.573, 0.717, 0.516, 0.717, 0.505, 0.720, 0.462, 0.722, 0.438, 0.719, 0.396, 0.719, 0.358, 0.714, 0.334, 0.714, 0.322, 0.711, 0.312, 0.701, 0.306, 0.687, 0.304, 0.663, 0.308, 0.630, 0.320, 0.596, 0.32, 0.588, 0.326, 0.579]]}]}
.
.
.
{"image_url": "AmlDatastore://image_data/Image_n.jpg", "image_details": {"format": "jpg", "width": "499px", "height": "666px"}, "label": [{"label": "water_bottle", "isCrowd": 0, "polygon": [[0.334, 0.626, 0.304, 0.621, 0.254, 0.603, 0.164, 0.605, 0.158, 0.602, 0.146, 0.602, 0.142, 0.608, 0.094, 0.612, 0.084, 0.599, 0.080, 0.585, 0.080, 0.539, 0.082, 0.536, 0.092, 0.533, 0.126, 0.530, 0.132, 0.533, 0.144, 0.533, 0.162, 0.525, 0.172, 0.525, 0.186, 0.521, 0.196, 0.521 ]]}, {"label": "milk_bottle", "isCrowd": 0, "polygon": [[0.392, 0.773, 0.380, 0.732, 0.379, 0.767, 0.367, 0.755, 0.362, 0.735, 0.362, 0.714, 0.352, 0.644, 0.352, 0.611, 0.362, 0.597, 0.40, 0.593, 0.444,  0.494, 0.588, 0.515, 0.585, 0.621, 0.588, 0.671, 0.582, 0.713, 0.572, 0.753 ]]}]}

Image example for instance segmentation.

Data format for inference

In this section, we document the input data format required to make predictions when using a deployed model. Any aforementioned image format is accepted with content type application/octet-stream.

Input format

The following is the input format needed to generate predictions on any task using task-specific model endpoint. After we deploy the model, we can use the following code snippet to get predictions for all tasks.

# input image for inference
sample_image = './test_image.jpg'
# load image data
data = open(sample_image, 'rb').read()
# set the content type
headers = {'Content-Type': 'application/octet-stream'}
# if authentication is enabled, set the authorization header
headers['Authorization'] = f'Bearer {key}'
# make the request and display the response
response = requests.post(scoring_uri, data, headers=headers)

Output format

Predictions made on model endpoints follow different structure depending on the task type. This section explores the output data formats for multi-class, multi-label image classification, object detection, and instance segmentation tasks.

Image classification

Endpoint for image classification returns all the labels in the dataset and their probability scores for the input image in the following format.

{
   "filename":"/tmp/tmppjr4et28",
   "probs":[
      2.098e-06,
      4.783e-08,
      0.999,
      8.637e-06
   ],
   "labels":[
      "can",
      "carton",
      "milk_bottle",
      "water_bottle"
   ]
}

Image classification multi-label

For image classification multi-label, model endpoint returns labels and their probabilities.

{
   "filename":"/tmp/tmpsdzxlmlm",
   "probs":[
      0.997,
      0.960,
      0.982,
      0.025
   ],
   "labels":[
      "can",
      "carton",
      "milk_bottle",
      "water_bottle"
   ]
}

Object detection

Object detection model returns multiple boxes with their scaled top-left and bottom-right coordinates along with box label and confidence score.

{
   "filename":"/tmp/tmpdkg2wkdy",
   "boxes":[
      {
         "box":{
            "topX":0.224,
            "topY":0.285,
            "bottomX":0.399,
            "bottomY":0.620
         },
         "label":"milk_bottle",
         "score":0.937
      },
      {
         "box":{
            "topX":0.664,
            "topY":0.484,
            "bottomX":0.959,
            "bottomY":0.812
         },
         "label":"can",
         "score":0.891
      },
      {
         "box":{
            "topX":0.423,
            "topY":0.253,
            "bottomX":0.632,
            "bottomY":0.725
         },
         "label":"water_bottle",
         "score":0.876
      }
   ]
}

Instance segmentation

In instance segmentation, output consists of multiple boxes with their scaled top-left and bottom-right coordinates, labels, confidence scores, and polygons (not masks). Here, the polygon values are in the same format that we discussed in the schema section.

{
   "filename":"/tmp/tmpi8604s0h",
   "boxes":[
      {
         "box":{
            "topX":0.679,
            "topY":0.491,
            "bottomX":0.926,
            "bottomY":0.810
         },
         "label":"can",
         "score":0.992,
         "polygon":[
            [
               0.82, 0.811, 0.771, 0.810, 0.758, 0.805, 0.741, 0.797, 0.735, 0.791, 0.718, 0.785, 0.715, 0.778, 0.706, 0.775, 0.696, 0.758, 0.695, 0.717, 0.698, 0.567, 0.705, 0.552, 0.706, 0.540, 0.725, 0.520, 0.735, 0.505, 0.745, 0.502, 0.755, 0.493
            ]
         ]
      },
      {
         "box":{
            "topX":0.220,
            "topY":0.298,
            "bottomX":0.397,
            "bottomY":0.601
         },
         "label":"milk_bottle",
         "score":0.989,
         "polygon":[
            [
               0.365, 0.602, 0.273, 0.602, 0.26, 0.595, 0.263, 0.588, 0.251, 0.546, 0.248, 0.501, 0.25, 0.485, 0.246, 0.478, 0.245, 0.463, 0.233, 0.442, 0.231, 0.43, 0.226, 0.423, 0.226, 0.408, 0.234, 0.385, 0.241, 0.371, 0.238, 0.345, 0.234, 0.335, 0.233, 0.325, 0.24, 0.305, 0.586, 0.38, 0.592, 0.375, 0.598, 0.365
            ]
         ]
      },
      {
         "box":{
            "topX":0.433,
            "topY":0.280,
            "bottomX":0.621,
            "bottomY":0.679
         },
         "label":"water_bottle",
         "score":0.988,
         "polygon":[
            [
               0.576, 0.680, 0.501, 0.680, 0.475, 0.675, 0.460, 0.625, 0.445, 0.630, 0.443, 0.572, 0.440, 0.560, 0.435, 0.515, 0.431, 0.501, 0.431, 0.433, 0.433, 0.426, 0.445, 0.417, 0.456, 0.407, 0.465, 0.381, 0.468, 0.327, 0.471, 0.318
            ]
         ]
      }
   ]
}

Note

The images used in this article are from the Fridge Objects dataset, copyright © Microsoft Corporation and available at computervision-recipes/01_training_introduction.ipynb under the MIT License.

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