Why use Data Augmentation?

I am currently working on a project involving the early detection of knee osteoarthritis. After reviewing numerous research papers on this topic, I've noticed that while there are decent results, the multiclass accuracy is not very high. What I find particularly interesting is that all the papers claiming very high multiclass accuracy utilize data augmentation. I am still trying to comprehend how rotating an image by 5 degrees, flipping, and cropping the images contribute to solving the problem. My understanding …

accuracy augmentation computervision data detection papers project research research papers results