# The GIST and RIST of Iterative Self-Training for Semi-Supervised Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.17105 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17105/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [CutMix: Regularization Strategy to Train Strong Classifiers with Localizable Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04899/) (2019)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Self-training with Noisy Student improves ImageNet classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04252/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Data Augmentation for Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12848/) (2019)
- [Mean teachers are better role models: Weight-averaged consistency targets improve semi-supervised deep learning results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01780/) (2017)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross-Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09005/) (2020)
- [Rethinking Pre-training and Self-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06882/) (2020)
- [S4L: Self-Supervised Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03670/) (2019)
- [ClassMix: Segmentation-Based Data Augmentation for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07936/) (2020)
- [Adversarial Learning for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07934/) (2018)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with High- and Low-level Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05724/) (2019)
- [Data Distillation: Towards Omni-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04440/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [A Survey on Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09899/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation Based on Pseudo-Labels: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01909/) (2024)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross Teacher Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01327/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Semi-supervised Segmentation Beyond Accuracy: Reliability and Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05917/) (2025)
- [Multi-Level Label Correction by Distilling Proximate Patterns for Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02065/) (2024)
- [FRIEREN: Federated Learning with Vision-Language Regularization for Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02114/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We consider the task of semi-supervised semantic segmentation, where we aim to produce pixel-wise semantic object masks given only a small number of human-labeled training examples. We focus on iterative self-training methods in which we explore the behavior of self-training over multiple refinement stages. We show that iterative self-training leads to performance degradation if done na"ively with a fixed ratio of human-labeled to pseudo-labeled training examples. We propose Greedy Iterative Self-Training (GIST) and Random Iterative Self-Training (RIST) strategies that alternate between training on either human-labeled data or pseudo-labeled data at each refinement stage, resulting in a performance boost rather than degradation. We further show that GIST and RIST can be combined with existing semi-supervised learning methods to boost performance.