# Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation with Prototype-based Consistency Regularization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.04388 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04388/

## Key facts

- Cited by 50 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2022.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Improved Regularization of Convolutional Neural Networks with Cutout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04552/) (2017)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Per-Pixel Classification is Not All You Need for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06278/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Data Augmentation for Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12848/) (2019)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [FlexMatch: Boosting Semi-Supervised Learning with Curriculum Pseudo Labeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08263/) (2021)
- [Pseudo-Labeling and Confirmation Bias in Deep Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02983/) (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 Pseudo Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01226/) (2021)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross-Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09005/) (2020)
- [Interpolation Consistency Training for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03825/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation Using Unreliable Pseudo-Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03884/) (2022)
- [ClassMix: Segmentation-Based Data Augmentation for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07936/) (2020)
- [ST++: Make Self-training Work Better for Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05095/) (2021)
- [PseudoSeg: Designing Pseudo Labels for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09713/) (2020)
- [Rethinking Semantic Segmentation: A Prototype View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15102/) (2022)
- [Deep Semantic Segmentation of Natural and Medical Images: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07655/) (2019)
- [Guided Collaborative Training for Pixel-wise Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05258/) (2020)
- [Perturbed and Strict Mean Teachers for Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12903/) (2021)
- [Pixel Contrastive-Consistent Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09025/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [UniMatch V2: Pushing the Limit of Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10777/) (2024)
- [CorrMatch: Label Propagation via Correlation Matching for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04300/) (2023)
- [SemiVL: Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Vision-Language Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16241/) (2023)
- [Switching Temporary Teachers for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18640/) (2023)
- [SAMRefiner: Taming Segment Anything Model for Universal Mask Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06756/) (2025)
- [Towards the Uncharted: Density-Descending Feature Perturbation for Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06462/) (2024)
- [Hunting Attributes: Context Prototype-Aware Learning for Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07630/) (2024)
- [Neural-MCRL: Neural Multimodal Contrastive Representation Learning for EEG-based Visual Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17337/) (2024)
- [Beyond Pixels: Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with a Multi-scale Patch-based Multi-Label Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04036/) (2024)
- [Semi-supervised Domain Adaptation via Prototype-based Multi-level Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02693/) (2023)
- [Bridging Synthetic and Real Worlds for Pre-training Scene Text Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05286/) (2023)
- [Space Engage: Collaborative Space Supervision for Contrastive-based Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09755/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation via Marginal Contextual Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13900/) (2023)
- [Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation with Multi-Constraint Consistency Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17914/) (2025)
- [PrevMatch: Revisiting and Maximizing Temporal Knowledge in Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20610/) (2024)
- [When Confidence Fails: Revisiting Pseudo-Label Selection in Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16704/) (2025)
- [Improving Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Dual-Level Siamese Structure Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13938/) (2023)
- [Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation Meets Masked Modeling:Fine-grained Locality Learning Matters in Consistency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08631/) (2023)
- [Zero-Shot Skeleton-Based Action Recognition With Prototype-Guided Feature Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00566/) (2025)
- [ConformalSAM: Unlocking the Potential of Foundational Segmentation Models in Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Conformal Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15803/) (2025)
- [Progressive Learning with Cross-Window Consistency for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12425/) (2022)
- [Confidence-Guided Semi-supervised Learning in Land Cover Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10344/) (2023)
- [ProCNS: Progressive Prototype Calibration and Noise Suppression for Weakly-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14074/) (2024)
- [PRCL: Probabilistic Representation Contrastive Learning for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18117/) (2024)
- [Prototype Learning Guided Hybrid Network for Breast Tumor Segmentation in DCE-MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05803/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Semi-supervised Segmentation Beyond Accuracy: Reliability and Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05917/) (2025)
- [Advancing Weakly-Supervised Change Detection in Satellite Images via Adversarial Class Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17186/) (2025)
- [Boundary-Refined Prototype Generation: A General End-to-End Paradigm for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10097/) (2023)
- [Weighting Pseudo-Labels via High-Activation Feature Index Similarity and Object Detection for Semi-Supervised Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12630/) (2024)
- [Integrating Semi-Supervised and Active Learning for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19227/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Semi-supervised semantic segmentation requires the model to effectively propagate the label information from limited annotated images to unlabeled ones. A challenge for such a per-pixel prediction task is the large intra-class variation, i.e., regions belonging to the same class may exhibit a very different appearance even in the same picture. This diversity will make the label propagation hard from pixels to pixels. To address this problem, we propose a novel approach to regularize the distribution of within-class features to ease label propagation difficulty. Specifically, our approach encourages the consistency between the prediction from a linear predictor and the output from a prototype-based predictor, which implicitly encourages features from the same pseudo-class to be close to at least one within-class prototype while staying far from the other between-class prototypes. By further incorporating CutMix operations and a carefully-designed prototype maintenance strategy, we create a semi-supervised semantic segmentation algorithm that demonstrates superior performance over the state-of-the-art methods from extensive experimental evaluation on both Pascal VOC and Cityscapes benchmarks.