import caffe

class My_Custom_Layer(caffe.Layer):
    def setup(self, bottom, top):
        pass
        
    def forward(self, bottom, top):
        pass
        
    def reshape(self, bottom, top):
        pass

    def backward(self, bottom, top):
        pass

So important things to remember:

• Your custom layer has to inherit from caffe.Layer (so don't forget to import caffe);
• You must define the four following methods: setup, forward, reshape and backward;
• All methods have a top and a bottom parameters, which are the blobs that store the input and the output passed to your layer. You can access it using top[i].data or bottom[i].data, where i is the index of the blob in case you have more than one upper or lower blob.

- Setup method

The Setup method is called once during the lifetime of the execution, when Caffe is instantiating all layers. This is where you will read parameters, instantiate fixed-size buffers.

- Reshape method

Use the reshape method for initialization/setup that depends on the bottom blob (layer input) size. It is called once when the network is instantiated.

- Forward method

The Forward method is called for each input batch and is where most of your logic will be.

- Backward method

The Backward method is called during the backward pass of the network. For example, in a convolution-like layer, this would be where you would calculate the gradients. This is optional (a layer can be forward-only).

Ok, so now you have your layer designed! This is how you define it in your .prototxt file:

layer {
  name: "LayerName"
  type: "Python"
  top: "TopBlobName"
  bottom: "BottomBlobName"
  python_param {
    module: "My_Custom_Layer_File"
    layer: "My_Custom_Layer_Class"
    param_str: '{"param1": 1,"param2":True, "param3":"some string"}'
  }
  include{
        phase: TRAIN
  }
}

Important remarks:

• type must be Python;
• You must have a python_param dictionary with at least the module and layer parameters;
• module refers to the file where you implemented your layer (without the .py);
• layer refers to the name of your class;
• You can pass parameters to the layer using param_str (more on accessing them bellow);
• Just like any other layer, you can define in which phase you want it to be active (see the examples to see how you can check the current phase);

You can define the layer parameters in the prototxt by using param_str. Once you've done it, here is an example on how you access these paremeters inside the layer class:

def setup(self, bottom, top):
    params = eval(self.param_str)
    param1 = params["param1"]
    param2 = params.get('param2', False) #I usually use this when fetching a bool
    param3 = params["param3"]
    
    #Continue with the setup
    # ...

In this example we will design a "measure" layer, that outputs the accuracy and a confusion matrix for a binary problem during training and the accuracy, false positive rate and false negative rate during test/validation. Although Caffe already has a Accuracy layer, sometimes you want something more, like a F-measure.

This is my measureLayer.py with my class definition:

#Remark: This class is designed for a binary problem, where the first class would be the 'negative'
# and the second class would be 'positive'

import caffe
TRAIN = 0
TEST = 1

class Measure_Layer(caffe.Layer):
    #Setup method
    def setup(self, bottom, top):
        #We want two bottom blobs, the labels and the predictions
        if len(bottom) != 2:
            raise Exception("Wrong number of bottom blobs (prediction and label)") 

        #And some top blobs, depending on the phase
        if self.phase = TEST and len(top) != 3:
            raise Exception("Wrong number of top blobs (acc, FPR, FNR)")
        if self.phase = TRAIN and len(top) != 5:
            raise Exception("Wrong number of top blobs (acc, tp, tn, fp and fn)")
       
        #Initialize some attributes
        self.TPs = 0.0
        self.TNs = 0.0
        self.FPs = 0.0
        self.FNs = 0.0
        self.totalImgs = 0

    #Forward method
    def forward(self, bottom, top):
        #The order of these depends on the prototxt definition
        predictions = bottom[0].data
        labels = bottom[1].data

        self.totalImgs += len(labels)

        for i in range(len(labels)): #len(labels) is equal to the batch size
                pred = predictions[i]   #pred is a tuple with the normalized probability 
                                        #of a sample i.r.t. two classes
                lab = labels[i]
                
                if pred[0] > pred[1]:
                        if lab == 1.0:
                                self.FNs += 1.0
                        else:
                                self.TNs += 1.0
                else:
                        if lab == 1.0:
                                self.TPs += 1.0
                        else:
                                self.FPs += 1.0

        acc = (self.TPs + self.TNs) / self.totalImgs
        
        try: #just assuring we don't divide by 0
                fpr = self.FPs / (self.FPs + self.TNs)
        except:
                fpr = -1.0

        try: #just assuring we don't divide by 0
                fnr = self.FNs / (self.FNs + self.TPs)
        except:
                fnr = -1.0
           
       #output data to top blob
       top[0].data = acc
       if self.phase == TRAIN:
           top[1].data = self.TPs
           top[2].data = self.TNs
           top[3].data = self.FPs
           top[4].data = self.FNs
       elif self.phase == TEST:
           top[1].data = fpr
           top[2].data = fnr
           
    def reshape(self, bottom, top):
        """
        We don't need to reshape or instantiate anything that is input-size sensitive
        """
        pass

    def backward(self, bottom, top):
        """
        This layer does not back propagate
        """
        pass

And this is an example of a prototxt with it:

layer {
  name: "metrics"
  type: "Python"
  top: "Acc"
  top: "TPs"
  top: "TNs"
  top: "FPs"
  top: "FNs"
  
  bottom: "prediction"   #let's supose we have these two bottom blobs
  bottom: "label"

  python_param {
    module: "measureLayer"
    layer: "Measure_Layer"
  }
  include {
    phase: TRAIN
  }
}

layer {
  name: "metrics"
  type: "Python"
  top: "Acc"
  top: "FPR"
  top: "FNR"
  
  bottom: "prediction"   #let's supose we have these two bottom blobs
  bottom: "label"

  python_param {
    module: "measureLayer"
    layer: "Measure_Layer"
  }
  include {
    phase: TEST
  }
}

This example is a custom data layer, that receives a text file with image paths, loads a batch of images and preprocesses them. Just a quick tip, Caffe already has a big range of data layers and probably a custom layer is not the most efficient way if you just want something simple.

My dataLayer.py could be something like:

import caffe

class Custom_Data_Layer(caffe.Layer):
    def setup(self, bottom, top):
        # Check top shape
        if len(top) != 2:
                raise Exception("Need to define tops (data and label)")
        
        #Check bottom shape
        if len(bottom) != 0:
            raise Exception("Do not define a bottom.")
        
        #Read parameters
        params = eval(self.param_str)
        src_file = params["src_file"]
        self.batch_size = params["batch_size"]
        self.im_shape = params["im_shape"]
        self.crop_size = params.get("crop_size", False)
        
        #Reshape top
        if self.crop_size:
            top[0].reshape(self.batch_size, 3, self.crop_size, self.crop_size)
        else:
            top[0].reshape(self.batch_size, 3, self.im_shape, self.im_shape)
            
        top[1].reshape(self.batch_size)

        #Read source file
        #I'm just assuming we have this method that reads the source file
        #and returns a list of tuples in the form of (img, label)
        self.imgTuples = readSrcFile(src_file) 
        
        self._cur = 0 #use this to check if we need to restart the list of imgs
        
    def forward(self, bottom, top):
        for itt in range(self.batch_size):
            # Use the batch loader to load the next image.
            im, label = self.load_next_image()
            
            #Here we could preprocess the image
            # ...
            
            # Add directly to the top blob
            top[0].data[itt, ...] = im
            top[1].data[itt, ...] = label
    
    def load_next_img(self):
        #If we have finished forwarding all images, then an epoch has finished
        #and it is time to start a new one
        if self._cur == len(self.imgTuples):
            self._cur = 0
            shuffle(self.imgTuples)
        
        im, label = self.imgTuples[self._cur]
        self._cur += 1
        
        return im, label
    
    def reshape(self, bottom, top):
        """
        There is no need to reshape the data, since the input is of fixed size
        (img shape and batch size)
        """
        pass

    def backward(self, bottom, top):
        """
        This layer does not back propagate
        """
        pass

And the prototxt would be like:

layer {
  name: "Data"
  type: "Python"
  top: "data"
  top: "label"
 
  python_param {
    module: "dataLayer"
    layer: "Custom_Data_Layer"
    param_str: '{"batch_size": 126,"im_shape":256, "crop_size":224, "src_file": "path_to_TRAIN_file.txt"}'
  }
}