CLAD: A Contrastive Learning based Approach for Background Debiasing
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Abstract (arXiv)
Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved superhuman performance in multiple vision tasks, especially image classification. However, unlike humans, CNNs leverage spurious features, such as background information to make decisions. This tendency creates different problems in terms of robustness or weak generalization performance. Through our work, we introduce a contrastive learning-based approach (CLAD) to mitigate the background bias in CNNs. CLAD encourages semantic focus on object foregrounds and penalizes learning features from irrelavant backgrounds. Our method also introduces an efficient way of sampling negative samples. We achieve state-of-the-art results on the Background Challenge dataset, outperforming the previous benchmark with a margin of 4.1%. Our paper shows how CLAD serves as a proof of concept for debiasing of spurious features, such as background and texture (in supplementary material).
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2022.
Builds on
34 of 48 references.
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22 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 2; 2025: 2; 2026: 1.
6 papers.
- 2024Separating common from salient patterns with Contrastive Representation Learningcited by 6
- 2025Efficient Calisthenics Skills Classification through Foreground Instance Selection and Depth Estimationcited by 1
- 2025Robust Context-Aware Object Recognitioncited by 1
- 2023Leveraging Habitat Information for Fine-grained Bird Identificationcited by 0
- 2024Bringing the Context Back into Object Recognition, Robustlycited by 0
- 2026ContextShift: A Controlled Benchmark for Context Dependence in Object Detectioncited by 0
- 2026ContextShift: A Controlled Benchmark for Context Dependence in Object Detection8 Jun 2026
- 2025Robust Context-Aware Object Recognition1 Oct 2025
- 2025Efficient Calisthenics Skills Classification through Foreground Instance Selection and Depth Estimation16 Jul 2025
- 2024Bringing the Context Back into Object Recognition, Robustly24 Nov 2024
- 2024Separating common from salient patterns with Contrastive Representation Learning19 Feb 2024
- 2023Leveraging Habitat Information for Fine-grained Bird Identification22 Dec 2023