# Transductive Few-shot Learning with Prototype-based Label Propagation by Iterative Graph Refinement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11598 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11598/

## Key facts

- Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [Sinkhorn Distances: Lightspeed Computation of Optimal Transportation Distances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.0895/) (2013)
- [Matching Networks for One Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04080/) (2016)
- [Learning to Compare: Relation Network for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06025/) (2017)
- [A Closer Look at Few-shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04232/) (2019)
- [Meta-Learning with Latent Embedding Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05960/) (2018)
- [Meta-Learning with Differentiable Convex Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03758/) (2019)
- [Meta-Learning for Semi-Supervised Few-Shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.00676/) (2018)
- [TADAM: Task dependent adaptive metric for improved few-shot learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10123/) (2018)
- [Few-Shot Learning with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.04043/) (2017)
- [A Baseline for Few-Shot Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.02729/) (2019)
- [Few-Shot Learning via Embedding Adaptation with Set-to-Set Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03664/) (2018)
- [Cross Attention Network for Few-shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07677/) (2019)
- [Learning to Propagate Labels: Transductive Propagation Network for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10002/) (2018)
- [SimpleShot: Revisiting Nearest-Neighbor Classification for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04623/) (2019)
- [Charting the Right Manifold: Manifold Mixup for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.12087/) (2019)
- [Edge-labeling Graph Neural Network for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01436/) (2019)
- [Prototype Rectification for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10713/) (2019)
- [Laplacian Regularized Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.15486/) (2020)
- [Learning to Self-Train for Semi-Supervised Few-Shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00562/) (2019)
- [Embedding Propagation: Smoother Manifold for Few-Shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04151/) (2020)
- [Leveraging the Feature Distribution in Transfer-based Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03806/) (2020)
- [Generating Classification Weights with GNN Denoising Autoencoders for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01102/) (2019)
- [Transductive Episodic-Wise Adaptive Metric for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02224/) (2019)
- [Instance Credibility Inference for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11853/) (2020)
- [Empirical Bayes Transductive Meta-Learning with Synthetic Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12696/) (2020)
- [Iterative label cleaning for transductive and semi-supervised few-shot learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07962/) (2020)

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

- [A General-Purpose Self-Supervised Model for Computational Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15474/) (2023)
- [MetaDiff: Meta-Learning with Conditional Diffusion for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16424/) (2023)
- [Transductive Zero-Shot and Few-Shot CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18437/) (2024)
- [Visual Prompting for Generalized Few-shot Segmentation: A Multi-scale Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11732/) (2024)
- [Few-Shot Recognition via Stage-Wise Retrieval-Augmented Finetuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11148/) (2024)
- [Learning Clustering-based Prototypes for Compositional Zero-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06501/) (2025)
- [Traffic Forecasting on New Roads Using Spatial Contrastive Pre-Training (SCPT)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05237/) (2023)
- [Meet JEANIE: a Similarity Measure for 3D Skeleton Sequences via Temporal-Viewpoint Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04599/) (2024)
- [Efficient and Context-Aware Label Propagation for Zero-/Few-Shot Training-Free Adaptation of Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18303/) (2024)
- [Adaptive manifold for imbalanced transductive few-shot learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14281/) (2023)
- [PrototypeFormer: Learning to Explore Prototype Relationships for Few-shot Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03517/) (2023)
- [ProCNS: Progressive Prototype Calibration and Noise Suppression for Weakly-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14074/) (2024)
- [Exploiting Field Dependencies for Learning on Categorical Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09321/) (2023)
- [Cross-Domain Few-Shot Learning with Coalescent Projections and Latent Space Reservation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15243/) (2025)
- [SpurAudio: A Benchmark for Studying Shortcut Learning in Few-Shot Audio Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13672/) (2026)
- [MICM: Rethinking Unsupervised Pretraining for Enhanced Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13385/) (2024)
- [UNEM: UNrolled Generalized EM for Transductive Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16739/) (2024)
- [Mitigating Domain Shift in Federated Learning via Intra- and Inter-Domain Prototypes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08521/) (2025)
- [Make It Up: Fake Images, Real Gains in Generalized Few-shot Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27206/) (2026)
- [Few-shot Image Classification based on Gradual Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15524/) (2023)
- [Language-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Hard Attention in Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07800/) (2023)
- [Robust Transductive Few-shot Learning via Joint Message Passing and Prototype-based Soft-label Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17096/) (2023)
- [Semantically Guided Dynamic Visual Prototype Refinement for Compositional Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07114/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Environmental Robustness in Few-shot Learning via Conditional Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01183/) (2025)
- [Unbiased Max-Min Embedding Classification for Transductive Few-Shot Learning: Clustering and Classification Are All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22193/) (2025)
- [Hierarchical Relation-augmented Representation Generalization for Few-shot Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10079/) (2025)
- [Color as the Impetus: Transforming Few-Shot Learner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22136/) (2025)
- [Object-Centric Cropping for Visual Few-Shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00218/) (2025)
- [Learning from Limited Labels: Transductive Graph Label Propagation for Indian Music Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03626/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Test-Time Training: Tilting The Latent Distribution For Few-Shot Source-Free Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02633/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Few-shot learning (FSL) is popular due to its ability to adapt to novel classes. Compared with inductive few-shot learning, transductive models typically perform better as they leverage all samples of the query set. The two existing classes of methods, prototype-based and graph-based, have the disadvantages of inaccurate prototype estimation and sub-optimal graph construction with kernel functions, respectively. In this paper, we propose a novel prototype-based label propagation to solve these issues. Specifically, our graph construction is based on the relation between prototypes and samples rather than between samples. As prototypes are being updated, the graph changes. We also estimate the label of each prototype instead of considering a prototype be the class centre. On mini-ImageNet, tiered-ImageNet, CIFAR-FS and CUB datasets, we show the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in transductive FSL and semi-supervised FSL when some unlabeled data accompanies the novel few-shot task.