Add a new annotation mode in Browse Patches

[StephenChan]

See slide 8 of the Beta Layouts slides; there's several ideas going on here and some of them are easier to grasp with the layout mockup.

[StephenChan]

We never got around to making the details of this public, so here goes. Up to this point, there have only been two ways to add confirmed annotations: import points/annotations from file (CSV or CPC), or visit the annotation tool for an individual image. We're proposing adding a third way, through a revamped Browse Patches page.

There are a few ideas going on here:

1. You'd be able to select patches on the current page, and then use the 'Assign label' button at the bottom to annotate those patches' points. Note that the patches can come from different images in the source. So, you'd be able to perform source-wide operations such as the following:

   • Search for all point patches labeled as 'Acropora cervicornis', and change all of those points to 'Acropora'.

   • Search for all point patches labeled as 'Acropora cervicornis', inspect them to see which ones should be 'Acropora clathrata' instead, and change them accordingly.

   The mock-up shows a few potential ways to select images on a page, and we're not sure which ones to adopt yet: checkbox to select all patches on the page, checkbox to select all patches on all pages, checkbox to select a particular row's patches, checkboxes on each individual patch. (Not sure about the row one personally, but we can experiment.) Since clicking a bunch of tiny checkboxes gets tricky, we'll likely want to allow clicking ON an individual patch to select it, in which case we need a different interaction assigned to visiting the annotation tool for that patch.

   We also need a way of indicating whether a patch is selected. If there are checkboxes on each patch, that's one way. Another way might be drawing a dashed border around patches that are selected. (The patch border color indicates whether the annotation is confirmed or not, similar to Browse Images.)

2. Machine confidence would be shown for each point patch, and it would be possible to sort patches by machine confidence. We haven't decided exactly how to indicate the confidence level, but it could be indicated with text like "85%" on the top of the patch, or using a green/red colored bar at the top of the patch (similar to label popularity bars), or through some other indicator.

   So for example, you could browse Acropora-labeled machine annotations starting at the lowest confidence level, and fix incorrect annotations as you go. As you continue, you should see more and more machine annotations which are correctly labeled as Acropora. When you start thinking that the annotations are accurate enough for your liking, you can stop and accept the remaining patches as Acropora.

   You can also browse in this manner as a basis for setting your source's Alleviate confidence threshold. If the annotations are accurate enough for your liking starting around 80%, then 80% should make sense as an Alleviate threshold.

This task would be a logical next step after issue #160. Implementing multiple labels per point would encourage people to move away from the 'combinatorial' labels such as 'Acropora digitate bleached'. But in order to move away from those labels, people have to change their existing annotations of that label, across all images in their source. This Browse Patches UI could provide a good way to do that. (In which case, the 'Assign label' button would need to support assigning multiple labels, not just one.)

[StephenChan]

Additional idea: I wonder if we could make it so that you can click a patch (or click a button next to it) to inspect the patch more closely, without having to go to the annotation tool. A few possibilities:

1. Show an increased-resolution version of the patch. For example, 600x600 instead of 150x150.
2. Show a patch which has a greater percentage of the original image content. Say, 40% instead of 20%.
3. Show a thumbnail of the full image, drawing a box shape around the part of the image where the patch is located.

Ideally, we would be able to show this on the Browse Patches page, perhaps pushing or covering other page elements to make space. And this pane, popup, or whatever it is would be collapsible.