# Dense Teacher: Dense Pseudo-Labels for Semi-supervised Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.02541 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02541/

## Key facts

- Cited by 48 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01355/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [Virtual Adversarial Training: A Regularization Method for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03976/) (2017)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Anchor-based and Anchor-free Detection via Adaptive Training Sample Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02424/) (2019)
- [Regularization With Stochastic Transformations and Perturbations for Deep Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04586/) (2016)
- [Generalized Focal Loss: Learning Qualified and Distributed Bounding Boxes for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04388/) (2020)
- [ReMixMatch: Semi-Supervised Learning with Distribution Alignment and Augmentation Anchoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09785/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Soft Teacher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09018/) (2021)
- [Unbiased Teacher for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09480/) (2021)
- [CrowdHuman: A Benchmark for Detecting Human in a Crowd](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00123/) (2018)
- [A Simple Semi-Supervised Learning Framework for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04757/) (2020)
- [Learning with Pseudo-Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.4864/) (2014)
- [Humble Teachers Teach Better Students for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10456/) (2021)
- [Instant-Teaching: An End-to-End Semi-Supervised Object Detection Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11402/) (2021)
- [Rethinking Pseudo Labels for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00168/) (2021)
- [Distilling Object Detectors with Feature Richness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00674/) (2021)
- [Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Adaptive Class-Rebalancing Self-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05031/) (2021)
- [PS-RCNN: Detecting Secondary Human Instances in a Crowd via Primary Object Suppression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07080/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Consistent-Teacher: Towards Reducing Inconsistent Pseudo-targets in Semi-supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01589/) (2022)
- [Semi-DETR: Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Detection Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08095/) (2023)
- [Boosting Semi-Supervised Learning by Exploiting All Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11066/) (2023)
- [SOOD: Towards Semi-Supervised Oriented Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04515/) (2023)
- [DDS3D: Dense Pseudo-Labels with Dynamic Threshold for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05079/) (2023)
- [Doubly Robust Self-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00265/) (2023)
- [Efficient Teacher: Semi-Supervised Object Detection for YOLOv5](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07577/) (2023)
- [Ambiguity-Resistant Semi-Supervised Learning for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14960/) (2023)
- [Diffusion-SS3D: Diffusion Model for Semi-supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02966/) (2023)
- [MixTeacher: Mining Promising Labels with Mixed Scale Teacher for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09061/) (2023)
- [SOOD++: Leveraging Unlabeled Data to Boost Oriented Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01016/) (2024)
- [Mixed Pseudo Labels for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07006/) (2023)
- [Pseudo Flow Consistency for Self-Supervised 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10016/) (2023)
- [Revisiting Class Imbalance for End-to-end Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02268/) (2023)
- [Semi-supervised Object Detection: A Survey on Recent Research and Progress](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14106/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Uncurated Unlabeled Data for Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05498/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Object Detection: A Survey on Progress from CNN to Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08460/) (2024)
- [Semi-Supervised Weed Detection in Vegetable Fields: In-domain and Cross-domain Experiments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17673/) (2025)
- [Pseudo-label Correction and Learning For Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02998/) (2023)
- [Partial Weakly-Supervised Oriented Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02751/) (2025)
- [SemiETS: Integrating Spatial and Content Consistencies for Semi-Supervised End-to-end Text Spotting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09966/) (2025)
- [LLM-Assisted Semantic Guidance for Sparsely Annotated Remote Sensing Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16970/) (2025)
- [EgoPoseFormer v2: Accurate Egocentric Human Motion Estimation for AR/VR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04090/) (2026)
- [Augment and Criticize: Exploring Informative Samples for Semi-Supervised Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11243/) (2023)
- [Pseudo-Labeling Enhanced by Privileged Information and Its Application to In Situ Sequencing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15898/) (2023)
- [SSF3D: Strict Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection with Switching Filter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17390/) (2024)
- [Sparse Generation: Making Pseudo Labels Sparse for Point Weakly Supervised Object Detection on Low Data Volume](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19306/) (2024)
- [IMWA: Iterative Model Weight Averaging Benefits Class-Imbalanced Learning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16331/) (2024)
- [Cross Domain Object Detection via Multi-Granularity Confidence Alignment based Mean Teacher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07780/) (2024)
- [Pseudo-Labeling Driven Refinement of Benchmark Object Detection Datasets via Analysis of Learning Patterns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00997/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To date, the most powerful semi-supervised object detectors (SS-OD) are based on pseudo-boxes, which need a sequence of post-processing with fine-tuned hyper-parameters. In this work, we propose replacing the sparse pseudo-boxes with the dense prediction as a united and straightforward form of pseudo-label. Compared to the pseudo-boxes, our Dense Pseudo-Label (DPL) does not involve any post-processing method, thus retaining richer information. We also introduce a region selection technique to highlight the key information while suppressing the noise carried by dense labels. We name our proposed SS-OD algorithm that leverages the DPL as Dense Teacher. On COCO and VOC, Dense Teacher shows superior performance under various settings compared with the pseudo-box-based methods.