# Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation with Pseudo Label Self-Refinement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.16979 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16979/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Oct 2023.

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

- [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)
- [A Closer Look at Memorization in Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05394/) (2017)
- [Segmenter: Transformer for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05633/) (2021)
- [Playing for Data: Ground Truth from Computer Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.02192/) (2016)
- [Deep Visual Domain Adaptation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03601/) (2018)
- [ADVENT: Adversarial Entropy Minimization for Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12833/) (2018)
- [Learning to Adapt Structured Output Space for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10349/) (2018)
- [FDA: Fourier Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05498/) (2020)
- [Bidirectional Learning for Domain Adaptation of Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10620/) (2019)
- [DAFormer: Improving Network Architectures and Training Strategies for Domain-Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14887/) (2021)
- [Prototypical Pseudo Label Denoising and Target Structure Learning for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10979/) (2021)
- [Exploring Cross-Image Pixel Contrast for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11939/) (2021)
- [DACS: Domain Adaptation via Cross-domain Mixed Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08702/) (2020)
- [Rectifying Pseudo Label Learning via Uncertainty Estimation for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03773/) (2020)
- [ClassMix: Segmentation-Based Data Augmentation for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07936/) (2020)
- [MIC: Masked Image Consistency for Context-Enhanced Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01322/) (2022)
- [HRDA: Context-Aware High-Resolution Domain-Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13132/) (2022)
- [Learning Texture Invariant Representation for Domain Adaptation of Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00867/) (2020)
- [Self-supervised Augmentation Consistency for Adapting Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00097/) (2021)
- [Self-Ensembling with GAN-based Data Augmentation for Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00589/) (2019)
- [Differential Treatment for Stuff and Things: A Simple Unsupervised Domain Adaptation Method for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08040/) (2020)
- [Dark Model Adaptation: Semantic Image Segmentation from Daytime to Nighttime](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02575/) (2018)
- [Guided Collaborative Training for Pixel-wise Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05258/) (2020)
- [Constructing Self-motivated Pyramid Curriculums for Cross-Domain Semantic Segmentation: A Non-Adversarial Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09547/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised domain adaptation for medical imaging segmentation with self-ensembling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06042/) (2018)
- [Map-Guided Curriculum Domain Adaptation and Uncertainty-Aware Evaluation for Semantic Nighttime Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14553/) (2020)
- [Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation with Self-Supervised Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13613/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Learning Spectral-Decomposed Tokens for Domain Generalized Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18568/) (2024)
- [EventFly: Event Camera Perception from Ground to the Sky](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19916/) (2025)
- [PCT: Perspective Cue Training Framework for Multi-Camera BEV Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12530/) (2024)
- [Language-Guided Instance-Aware Domain-Adaptive Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03799/) (2024)
- [Unlocking Constraints: Source-Free Occlusion-Aware Seamless Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21198/) (2025)
- [DUDA: Distilled Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Lightweight Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09814/) (2025)
- [AFRDA: Attentive Feature Refinement for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17957/) (2025)
- [Repurposing SAM for User-Defined Semantics Aware Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02420/) (2023)
- [Vox-UDA: Voxel-wise Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Cryo-Electron Subtomogram Segmentation with Denoised Pseudo Labeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18610/) (2024)
- [SydneyScapes: Image Segmentation for Australian Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07542/) (2025)
- [Source-Free Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation of Remote Sensing Images with Diffusion-Guided Label Enrichment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18502/) (2025)
- [Multi-Channel Uncertainty-Weighted Score Matching for Conditional Diffusion in Medical UDA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22476/) (2025)
- [OMUDA: Omni-level Masking for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12303/) (2025)
- [Why Invariance is Not Enough for Biomedical Domain Generalization and How to Fix It](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02564/) (2026)
- [Dual-Foundation Models for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03365/) (2026)
- [Vision-Language-Guided Pseudo-Labels for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation for Waste Sorting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00898/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning-based solutions for semantic segmentation suffer from significant performance degradation when tested on data with different characteristics than what was used during the training. Adapting the models using annotated data from the new domain is not always practical. Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) approaches are crucial in deploying these models in the actual operating conditions. Recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) UDA methods employ a teacher-student self-training approach, where a teacher model is used to generate pseudo-labels for the new data which in turn guide the training process of the student model. Though this approach has seen a lot of success, it suffers from the issue of noisy pseudo-labels being propagated in the training process. To address this issue, we propose an auxiliary pseudo-label refinement network (PRN) for online refining of the pseudo labels and also localizing the pixels whose predicted labels are likely to be noisy. Being able to improve the quality of pseudo labels and select highly reliable ones, PRN helps self-training of segmentation models to be robust against pseudo label noise propagation during different stages of adaptation. We evaluate our approach on benchmark datasets with three different domain shifts, and our approach consistently performs significantly better than the previous state-of-the-art methods.