# Adaptive Contrast for Image Regression in Computer-Aided Disease Assessment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.11700 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11700/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Dec 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [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)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features by Contrasting Cluster Assignments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09882/) (2020)
- [FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03832/) (2015)
- [Supervised Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11362/) (2020)
- [Improved Baselines with Momentum Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04297/) (2020)
- [The Kinetics Human Action Video Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.06950/) (2017)
- [An Empirical Study of Training Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02057/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning by Predicting Image Rotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07728/) (2018)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09246/) (2016)
- [Graph Contrastive Learning with Augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13902/) (2020)
- [A Closer Look at Spatiotemporal Convolutions for Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11248/) (2017)
- [What Makes for Good Views for Contrastive Learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10243/) (2020)
- [Prototypical Contrastive Learning of Unsupervised Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04966/) (2020)
- [Dense Contrastive Learning for Self-Supervised Visual Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09157/) (2020)
- [UNet 3+: A Full-Scale Connected UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.08790/) (2020)
- [Efficient Multi-Scale 3D CNN with Fully Connected CRF for Accurate Brain Lesion Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05959/) (2016)
- [Deep Learning for Segmentation using an Open Large-Scale Dataset in 2D Echocardiography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06948/) (2019)
- [Transformation Consistent Self-ensembling Model for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00348/) (2019)
- [TCLR: Temporal Contrastive Learning for Video Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07974/) (2021)
- [Contrastive Learning based Hybrid Networks for Long-Tailed Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14267/) (2021)
- [Contrastive Learning for Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06985/) (2020)
- [AET vs. AED: Unsupervised Representation Learning by Auto-Encoding Transformations rather than Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04596/) (2019)
- [Augment your batch: better training with larger batches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09335/) (2019)
- [CANet: Cross-disease Attention Network for Joint Diabetic Retinopathy and Diabetic Macular Edema Grading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.01376/) (2019)
- [Ultrasound Video Transformers for Cardiac Ejection Fraction Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00977/) (2021)
- [Robust Optimization for Deep Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.06606/) (2015)
- [A weakly supervised adaptive triplet loss for deep metric learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12939/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Teach CLIP to Develop a Number Sense for Ordinal Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03574/) (2024)
- [Semi-Supervised Deep Regression with Uncertainty Consistency and Variational Model Ensembling via Bayesian Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07579/) (2023)
- [Cyclical Self-Supervision for Semi-Supervised Ejection Fraction Prediction from Echocardiogram Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11291/) (2022)
- [TractoSCR: A Novel Supervised Contrastive Regression Framework for Prediction of Neurocognitive Measures Using Multi-Site Harmonized Diffusion MRI Tractography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07411/) (2022)
- [CoReEcho: Continuous Representation Learning for 2D+time Echocardiography Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10164/) (2024)
- [Urban Safety Perception Assessments via Integrating Multimodal Large Language Models with Street View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19719/) (2024)
- [SupReMix: Supervised Contrastive Learning for Medical Imaging Regression with Mixup](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16633/) (2023)
- [Joint Self-Supervised and Supervised Contrastive Learning for Multimodal MRI Data: Towards Predicting Abnormal Neurodevelopment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15064/) (2023)
- [Learning Generalized Hybrid Proximity Representation for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13459/) (2023)
- [In-Pixel Foreground and Contrast Enhancement Circuits with Customizable Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18052/) (2024)
- [Regression Metric Loss: Learning a Semantic Representation Space for Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05231/) (2022)
- [SCOL: Supervised Contrastive Ordinal Loss for Abdominal Aortic Calcification Scoring on Vertebral Fracture Assessment Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12006/) (2023)
- [M(otion)-mode Based Prediction of Ejection Fraction using Echocardiograms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03759/) (2023)
- [ACCon: Angle-Compensated Contrastive Regularizer for Deep Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07045/) (2025)
- [CardiacCLIP: Video-based CLIP Adaptation for LVEF Prediction in a Few-shot Manner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17065/) (2025)
- [Contrastive Learning for Semi-Supervised Deep Regression with Generalized Ordinal Rankings from Spectral Seriation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09267/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image regression tasks for medical applications, such as bone mineral density (BMD) estimation and left-ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) prediction, play an important role in computer-aided disease assessment. Most deep regression methods train the neural network with a single regression loss function like MSE or L1 loss. In this paper, we propose the first contrastive learning framework for deep image regression, namely AdaCon, which consists of a feature learning branch via a novel adaptive-margin contrastive loss and a regression prediction branch. Our method incorporates label distance relationships as part of the learned feature representations, which allows for better performance in downstream regression tasks. Moreover, it can be used as a plug-and-play module to improve performance of existing regression methods. We demonstrate the effectiveness of AdaCon on two medical image regression tasks, ie, bone mineral density estimation from X-ray images and left-ventricular ejection fraction prediction from echocardiogram videos. AdaCon leads to relative improvements of 3.3% and 5.9% in MAE over state-of-the-art BMD estimation and LVEF prediction methods, respectively.