A method of using a computer to semantically segment an image using a convolutional neural network system where a processor configured to convolve an input image with a plurality of filters and outputting a first output volume, pool the first output volume and creating a first activation map, determine the level of influence of the first activation map on the semantic segmentation, up-pool the first activation map to form an output image having a same number of pixels as the input image, output a probabilistic segmentation result, labeling each pixel's probability that it is a particular label, and the determination of the level of influence of the first activation map on the semantic segmentation is done using a gate layer that is positioned between a pooling layer and an up-pooling layer.