# Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation via Patch-Wise Contrastive Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.11056 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11056/

## Key facts

- Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Contrastive Multiview Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05849/) (2019)
- [CyCADA: Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03213/) (2017)
- [Playing for Data: Ground Truth from Computer Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.02192/) (2016)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Pretext-Invariant Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01991/) (2019)
- [Contrastive Learning for Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15651/) (2020)
- [ADVENT: Adversarial Entropy Minimization for Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12833/) (2018)
- [Learning to Adapt Structured Output Space for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10349/) (2018)
- [FDA: Fourier Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05498/) (2020)
- [Invariant Information Clustering for Unsupervised Image Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06653/) (2018)
- [Semi-supervised Domain Adaptation via Minimax Entropy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06487/) (2019)
- [Contrastive learning of global and local features for medical image segmentation with limited annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10511/) (2020)
- [Discriminative Unsupervised Feature Learning with Exemplar Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.6909/) (2014)
- [FCNs in the Wild: Pixel-level Adversarial and Constraint-based Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02649/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Embedding Learning via Invariant and Spreading Instance Feature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03436/) (2019)
- [Local Aggregation for Unsupervised Learning of Visual Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12355/) (2019)
- [Multi-task Self-Supervised Visual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07860/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Intra-domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation through Self-Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07703/) (2020)
- [Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation with Maximum Squares Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13589/) (2019)
- [No More Discrimination: Cross City Adaptation of Road Scene Segmenters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.08509/) (2017)
- [Adversarial Dropout Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.01575/) (2017)
- [Constructing Self-motivated Pyramid Curriculums for Cross-Domain Semantic Segmentation: A Non-Adversarial Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09547/) (2019)
- [Contrastive Learning for Weakly Supervised Phrase Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09920/) (2020)
- [DCAN: Dual Channel-wise Alignment Networks for Unsupervised Scene Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.05827/) (2018)
- [DADA: Depth-aware Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01886/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 30)

- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Pixel-Level Contrastive Learning from a Class-wise Memory Bank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13415/) (2021)
- [Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation by Pixel-to-Prototype Contrast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07110/) (2021)
- [MM-TTA: Multi-Modal Test-Time Adaptation for 3D Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12667/) (2022)
- [CLDA: Contrastive Learning for Semi-Supervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00085/) (2021)
- [Contrast and Mix: Temporal Contrastive Video Domain Adaptation with Background Mixing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15128/) (2021)
- [PiPa: Pixel- and Patch-wise Self-supervised Learning for Domain Adaptative Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07609/) (2022)
- [Prototypical Contrast Adaptation for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06654/) (2022)
- [Survey on Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation for Visual Perception in Automated Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11928/) (2023)
- [DecoupleNet: Decoupled Network for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09988/) (2022)
- [Learning from Future: A Novel Self-Training Framework for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06993/) (2022)
- [Learning to Align Sequential Actions in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09301/) (2021)
- [Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation via Regional Contrastive Consistency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05170/) (2021)
- [CLUDA : Contrastive Learning in Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14227/) (2022)
- [REGRAD: A Large-Scale Relational Grasp Dataset for Safe and Object-Specific Robotic Grasping in Clutter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14118/) (2021)
- [CellTranspose: Few-shot Domain Adaptation for Cellular Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14121/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Domain Invariant Features for Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02594/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Contrastive Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08399/) (2022)
- [Jitter Does Matter: Adapting Gaze Estimation to New Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02082/) (2022)
- [Consistency Regularisation in Varying Contexts and Feature Perturbations for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation of Histology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13141/) (2023)
- [CLICv2: Image Complexity Representation via Content Invariance Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06641/) (2025)
- [Semantic-Aware Contrastive Learning for Multi-object Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01596/) (2021)
- [An Active and Contrastive Learning Framework for Fine-Grained Off-Road Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09002/) (2022)
- [Towards Dynamic and Small Objects Refinement for Unsupervised Domain Adaptative Nighttime Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04747/) (2023)
- [Active Domain Adaptation with Multi-level Contrastive Units for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11192/) (2022)
- [Dual-level Interaction for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07972/) (2023)
- [PiPa++: Towards Unification of Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation via Self-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17101/) (2024)
- [Adversarial Semi-Supervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation: A New Role for Labeled Target Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07370/) (2023)
- [A Study on Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation in the Era of Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16407/) (2024)
- [OMUDA: Omni-level Masking for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12303/) (2025)
- [Contrastive Order Learning: A General Framework for Ordinal Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08109/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce a novel approach to unsupervised and semi-supervised domain adaptation for semantic segmentation. Unlike many earlier methods that rely on adversarial learning for feature alignment, we leverage contrastive learning to bridge the domain gap by aligning the features of structurally similar label patches across domains. As a result, the networks are easier to train and deliver better performance. Our approach consistently outperforms state-of-the-art unsupervised and semi-supervised methods on two challenging domain adaptive segmentation tasks, particularly with a small number of target domain annotations. It can also be naturally extended to weakly-supervised domain adaptation, where only a minor drop in accuracy can save up to 75% of annotation cost.