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    锚定边界: 融合双边对比学习和BMIU增广的深度不平衡回归

    Anchors as Boundaries:Integrating Bilateral Contrastive Learning and BMIU for Deep Imbalanced Regression

    • 摘要: 不平衡回归专指标签连续但其等长标签段(label-bin)内样本数不等的学习任务,而对应的深度延伸形成了当前流行的深度不平衡回归(Deep Imbalanced Regression,DIR).这些算法均隐含假设了等间隔标签段组成的样本对相似性一致,以年龄和图像景深(depth)估计为例,该假设认为不同年龄段人脸老化速度和不同空间距离深度视觉线索均相同,而我们的前导实验挑战了这一假设;与此同时,DIR还面临标签段内样本差异大以及相邻标签段判别界限重叠的问题.为应对上述挑战,本文提出一种融合双边对比学习(Bilateral Contrastive Learning,BCL)和双边Universum(Bilateral Mixup-Induced Universum,BMIU)增广的BCLU策略及其对应的RBLU算法.一方面,BCL以锚点为边界将数据划分成左右子集,锚点在各子集内能单向匹配到强相似的正对,克服了仅依标签距离构造出标签弱相似但语义强相似负对的困境,达到放宽均匀假设的目的,实验也证明BCL显著缓和了样本不平衡;另一方面,BMIU将锚点与两侧子集内随机选择的样本特征混合,构造出不属于任何标签段且能抑制相邻标签段重叠的楔形(wedge)特征,强制标签段间判别边界尽可能分离、标签段内特征尽可能紧致以降低类间重叠.值得提及的是,BMIU能作为副产品在无需引入任何有序约束的前提下,便能自然地保持有序特性.最后在DIR标准数据集上充分验证了所提RBLU算法的有效性.

       

      Abstract: Imbalanced regression tackles learning tasks where the labels are continuous but the sample distribution across equidistant label-bins is skewed, with its deep learning extension forming the emerging field of Deep Imbalanced Regression (DIR). Existing algorithms implicitly assume a consistent similarity pattern among samples within equidistant label-bins. For example, this presumption implies uniform facial aging rates across age groups and identical depth perception cues across spatial intervals. However, our preliminary experiments have empirically refuted these hypotheses. Furthermore, DIR also confronts challenges such as significant intra-bin sample heterogeneity and overlapping decision boundaries between adjacent bins. To address the aforementioned challenges, we propose BCLU , a novel strategy integrating Bilateral Contrastive Learning (BCL) and Bilateral Mixup-Induced Universum (BMIU) augmentation, along with the corresponding RBLU algorithm. On one hand, BCL dynamically partitions data into left and right subsets anchored at adaptively determined boundaries, enabling unidirectional matching of strongly similar positive pairs within each subset. This mechanism overcomes the dilemma of constructing negative pairs with weak label similarity but strong semantic affinity, thereby relaxing the homogeneous assumption. Experimental results demonstrate BCL's effectiveness in mitigating the imbalance of samples. On the other hand, BMIU generates hybrid features by mixing anchors with randomly selected samples from bilateral subsets, constructing wedge-shaped features that belong to no specific label-bin. This strategy enforces the discriminant boundary between label-bin to be maximally separated while ensuring that the features within each label-bins are as compact as possible, thereby suppressing inter-bin overlaps. Notably, BMIU inherently preserves label-ordering consistency without explicit any ordinal constraints. Extensive experiments on standard DIR benchmarks thoroughly validate the superior efficacy of the proposed RBLU algorithm.

       

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