Extract features from last hidden layer Pytorch Resnet18
I am implementing an image classifier using the Oxford Pet dataset with the pre-trained Resnet18 CNN.
The dataset consists of 37 categories with ~200 images in each of them.
Rather than using the final fc layer of the CNN as output to make predictions I want to use the CNN as a feature extractor to classify the pets.
For each image i'd like to grab features from the last hidden layer (which should be before the 1000-dimensional output layer). My model is using Relu activation so I should grab the output just after the ReLU (so all values will be non-negative)
Here is code (following the transfer learning tutorial on Pytorch):
loading data
normalize = transforms.Normalize(mean=[0.485, 0.456, 0.406],
                                std=[0.229, 0.224, 0.225])


image_datasets = {&quot;train&quot;: datasets.ImageFolder('images_new/train', transforms.Compose([
        transforms.RandomResizedCrop(224),
        transforms.RandomHorizontalFlip(),
        transforms.ToTensor(),
        normalize
    ])), &quot;test&quot;: datasets.ImageFolder('images_new/test', transforms.Compose([
        transforms.Resize(256),
        transforms.CenterCrop(224),
        transforms.ToTensor(),
        normalize
    ]))
               }

dataloaders = {x: torch.utils.data.DataLoader(image_datasets[x], batch_size=4,
                                             shuffle=True, num_workers=4, pin_memory=True)
              for x in ['train', 'test']}

dataset_sizes = {x: len(image_datasets[x]) for x in ['train', 'test']}

train_class_names = image_datasets['train'].classes

device = torch.device(&quot;cuda:0&quot; if torch.cuda.is_available() else &quot;cpu&quot;)

train function
def train_model(model, criterion, optimizer, scheduler, num_epochs=25):
    since = time.time()

    best_model_wts = copy.deepcopy(model.state_dict())
    best_acc = 0.0

    for epoch in range(num_epochs):
        print('Epoch {}/{}'.format(epoch, num_epochs - 1))
        print('-' * 10)

        # Each epoch has a training and validation phase
        for phase in ['train', 'test']:
            if phase == 'train':
                scheduler.step()
                model.train()  # Set model to training mode
            else:
                model.eval()   # Set model to evaluate mode

            running_loss = 0.0
            running_corrects = 0

            # Iterate over data.
            for inputs, labels in dataloaders[phase]:
                inputs = inputs.to(device)
                labels = labels.to(device)

                # zero the parameter gradients
                optimizer.zero_grad()

                # forward
                # track history if only in train
                with torch.set_grad_enabled(phase == 'train'):
                    
                    outputs = model(inputs)
                    _, preds = torch.max(outputs, 1)
                    
                    
                    loss = criterion(outputs, labels)

                    # backward + optimize only if in training phase
                    if phase == 'train':
                        loss.backward()
                        optimizer.step()

                # statistics
                running_loss += loss.item() * inputs.size(0)
                running_corrects += torch.sum(preds == labels.data)

            epoch_loss = running_loss / dataset_sizes[phase]
            epoch_acc = running_corrects.double() / dataset_sizes[phase]

            print('{} Loss: {:.4f} Acc: {:.4f}'.format(
                phase, epoch_loss, epoch_acc))

            # deep copy the model
            if phase == 'test' and epoch_acc &gt; best_acc:
                best_acc = epoch_acc
                best_model_wts = copy.deepcopy(model.state_dict())

        print()

    time_elapsed = time.time() - since
    print('Training complete in {:.0f}m {:.0f}s'.format(
        time_elapsed // 60, time_elapsed % 60))
    print('Best val Acc: {:4f}'.format(best_acc))

    # load best model weights
    model.load_state_dict(best_model_wts)
    return model

Compute SGD cross-entropy loss
model_ft = models.resnet18(pretrained=True)
num_ftrs = model_ft.fc.in_features

print(&quot;number of features: &quot;, num_ftrs)

model_ft.fc = nn.Linear(num_ftrs, len(train_class_names))

model_ft = model_ft.to(device)
criterion = nn.CrossEntropyLoss()

# Observe that all parameters are being optimized
optimizer_ft = optim.SGD(model_ft.parameters(), lr=0.001, momentum=0.9)

# Decay LR by a factor of 0.1 every 7 epochs
exp_lr_scheduler = lr_scheduler.StepLR(optimizer_ft, step_size=7, gamma=0.1)
model_ft = train_model(model_ft, criterion, optimizer_ft, exp_lr_scheduler,
                       num_epochs=24)

Now how do I get a feature vector from the last hidden layer for each of my images? I know I have to freeze the previous layer so that gradient isn't computed on them but I'm having trouble extracting the feature vectors.
My ultimate goal is to use those feature vectors to train a linear classifier such as Ridge or something like that.
Thanks!

This is probably not the best idea, but you can do something like this:
#assuming model_ft is trained now
model_ft.fc_backup = model_ft.fc
model_ft.fc = nn.Sequential() #empty sequential layer does nothing (pass-through)
# or model_ft.fc = nn.Identity()
# now you use your network as a feature extractor

I also checked fc is the right attribute to change, look at forward
