---
license: apache-2.0
library_name: litert
pipeline_tag: image-segmentation
tags:
  - litert
  - tflite
  - android
  - on-device
  - gpu
  - portrait-matting
  - image-matting
  - background-removal
  - modnet
  - real-time
---

# MODNet — LiteRT (trimap-free portrait matting, GPU)

On-device **real-time portrait matting** running **fully on the LiteRT `CompiledModel`
GPU** delegate (no CPU fallback). [MODNet](https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11961) (AAAI 2022)
predicts a **soft alpha matte** for a person — no trimap, no green screen — for
background blur/replace (video calls, virtual backgrounds). ~79 ms/frame on a Pixel 8a.

- **Architecture:** MODNet — MobileNetV2 low-res branch + high-res + fusion branches (pure CNN).
- **Weights:** [ZHKKKe/MODNet](https://github.com/ZHKKKe/MODNet) · Apache-2.0 · ~6.5 M params.
- **Size:** 26 MB.

![MODNet portrait matting](hero.png)

## I/O

- **Input:** `[1, 3, 512, 512]` NCHW, RGB, normalized to `[-1, 1]` (`(x/255 - 0.5) / 0.5`).
- **Output:** `[1, 1, 512, 512]` soft alpha matte in `[0, 1]` (composite: `fg·α + bg·(1-α)`).

## GPU conversion

MODNet is a pure CNN with `align_corners=False` interpolation. Two re-authoring
patches make it a **fully GPU-compatible graph — 0 tensors of rank > 4, 0 banned ops**:

1. **SE block `Linear` → `1×1 conv`** — the stock squeeze-excite `pool → Linear →
   view(b,c,1,1) → x*w` confuses the NCHW↔NHWC layout (`mul` broadcast mismatch);
   1×1 convs on the pooled tensor are identical and NCHW-clean.
2. **fp16-safe hierarchical-mean `InstanceNorm`** — MODNet's IBNorm runs
   `InstanceNorm2d` over up to 512×512 spatial; on the Mali GPU (fp16) the variance
   `sum(dd²)` overflows (≫ 65504) and the matte degrades (halos, blotchy interior,
   corr 0.94). Computing the spatial mean via a cascade of `/2` average-pools
   (magnitude-bounded, exact for power-of-2) + `dd·rsqrt(mean(dd²)+eps)` restores it
   to GPU corr **0.99994** with clean edges.

CPU-exact vs PyTorch (corr 0.99999999999); device Mali GPU corr 0.99994.

## Minimal usage

### Kotlin (Android, LiteRT CompiledModel GPU)

```kotlin
val options = CompiledModel.Options(Accelerator.GPU)
val model = CompiledModel.create(context.assets, "modnet.tflite", options, null)
val inBufs = model.createInputBuffers()
val outBufs = model.createOutputBuffers()

inBufs[0].writeFloat(inputNCHW)          // [1,3,512,512], RGB, (x/255-0.5)/0.5
model.run(inBufs, outBufs)
val alpha = outBufs[0].readFloat()       // [512*512] soft matte in [0,1]
// composite:  out = fg*alpha + bg*(1-alpha)
```

### Python (LiteRT / ai-edge-litert)

```python
from ai_edge_litert.interpreter import Interpreter
import numpy as np

it = Interpreter(model_path="modnet.tflite"); it.allocate_tensors()
inp, out = it.get_input_details(), it.get_output_details()
x = ((img[None].transpose(0,3,1,2) / 255.0 - 0.5) / 0.5).astype(np.float32)  # [1,3,512,512]
it.set_tensor(inp[0]["index"], x); it.invoke()
alpha = it.get_tensor(out[0]["index"])[0, 0]   # [512,512] in [0,1]
```

## Conversion

Converted with **litert-torch** (`build_modnet.py`): loads the trained MODNet weights,
applies the two patches (SE 1×1-conv, SafeInstanceNorm), and exports.

## License

Apache-2.0 (MODNet / ZHKKKe/MODNet).