# Boundary-Refined Prototype Generation: A General End-to-End Paradigm for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10097 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10097/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 57 of its 84 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 57)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (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)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (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)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Pyramid Scene Parsing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01105/) (2016)
- [Matching Networks for One Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04080/) (2016)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Big Self-Supervised Models are Strong Semi-Supervised Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10029/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Semi-Supervised Learning with Deep Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.5298/) (2014)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross Pseudo Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01226/) (2021)
- [PANet: Few-Shot Image Semantic Segmentation with Prototype Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06391/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross-Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09005/) (2020)
- [S4L: Self-Supervised Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03670/) (2019)
- [Deep Multi-modal Object Detection and Semantic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving: Datasets, Methods, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07830/) (2019)
- [Label Propagation for Deep Semi-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04717/) (2019)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Revisiting Weak-to-Strong Consistency in Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09910/) (2022)
- [Adversarial Learning for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07934/) (2018)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with High- and Low-level Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05724/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [CW-BASS: Confidence-Weighted Boundary-Aware Learning for Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15152/) (2025)
- [Adaptive Spatial Augmentation for Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23438/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Semi-supervised semantic segmentation has attracted increasing attention in computer vision, aiming to leverage unlabeled data through latent supervision. To achieve this goal, prototype-based classification has been introduced and achieved lots of success. However, the current approaches isolate prototype generation from the main training framework, presenting a non-end-to-end workflow. Furthermore, most methods directly perform the K-Means clustering on features to generate prototypes, resulting in their proximity to category semantic centers, while overlooking the clear delineation of class boundaries. To address the above problems, we propose a novel end-to-end boundary-refined prototype generation (BRPG) method. Specifically, we perform online clustering on sampled features to incorporate the prototype generation into the whole training framework. In addition, to enhance the classification boundaries, we sample and cluster high- and low-confidence features separately based on confidence estimation, facilitating the generation of prototypes closer to the class boundaries. Moreover, an adaptive prototype optimization strategy is proposed to increase the number of prototypes for categories with scattered feature distributions, which further refines the class boundaries. Extensive experiments demonstrate the remarkable robustness and scalability of our method across diverse datasets, segmentation networks, and semi-supervised frameworks, outperforming the state-of-the-art approaches on three benchmark datasets: PASCAL VOC 2012, Cityscapes and MS COCO. The code is available at https://github.com/djh-dzxw/BRPG.