# Multi-Domain Learning by Meta-Learning: Taking Optimal Steps in Multi-Domain Loss Landscapes by Inner-Loop Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.13147 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13147/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [On First-Order Meta-Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02999/) (2018)
- [Learning to Generalize: Meta-Learning for Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03463/) (2017)
- [Learning to learn by gradient descent by gradient descent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04474/) (2016)
- [Learning multiple visual domains with residual adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08045/) (2017)
- [Not-so-supervised: a survey of semi-supervised, multi-instance, and transfer learning in medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06353/) (2018)
- [Generalized Inner Loop Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01727/) (2019)
- [Meta-Learning via Learned Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05374/) (2019)
- [Brain Tumor Segmentation and Radiomics Survival Prediction: Contribution to the BRATS 2017 Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10508/) (2018)
- [A Unified Perspective on Multi-Domain and Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.7489/) (2014)
- [Learning to Learn: Meta-Critic Networks for Sample Efficient Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.09529/) (2017)
- [Multi-Domain Adversarial Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.09239/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [FGML-DG: Feynman-Inspired Cognitive Science Paradigm for Cross-Domain Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10524/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We consider a model-agnostic solution to the problem of Multi-Domain Learning (MDL) for multi-modal applications. Many existing MDL techniques are model-dependent solutions which explicitly require nontrivial architectural changes to construct domain-specific modules. Thus, properly applying these MDL techniques for new problems with well-established models, e.g. U-Net for semantic segmentation, may demand various low-level implementation efforts. In this paper, given emerging multi-modal data (e.g., various structural neuroimaging modalities), we aim to enable MDL purely algorithmically so that widely used neural networks can trivially achieve MDL in a model-independent manner. To this end, we consider a weighted loss function and extend it to an effective procedure by employing techniques from the recently active area of learning-to-learn (meta-learning). Specifically, we take inner-loop gradient steps to dynamically estimate posterior distributions over the hyperparameters of our loss function. Thus, our method is model-agnostic, requiring no additional model parameters and no network architecture changes; instead, only a few efficient algorithmic modifications are needed to improve performance in MDL. We demonstrate our solution to a fitting problem in medical imaging, specifically, in the automatic segmentation of white matter hyperintensity (WMH). We look at two neuroimaging modalities (T1-MR and FLAIR) with complementary information fitting for our problem.