  Convolutional Networks (ConvNets) have recently improved image recognition
performance thanks to end-to-end learning of deep feed-forward models from raw
pixels. Deep learning is a marked departure from the previous state of the art,
the Fisher Vector (FV), which relied on gradient-based encoding of local
hand-crafted features. In this paper, we discuss a novel connection between
these two approaches. First, we show that one can derive gradient
representations from ConvNets in a similar fashion to the FV. Second, we show
that this gradient representation actually corresponds to a structured matrix
that allows for efficient similarity computation. We experimentally study the
benefits of transferring this representation over the outputs of ConvNet
layers, and find consistent improvements on the Pascal VOC 2007 and 2012
datasets.
