# How does self-supervised pretraining improve robustness against noisy labels across various medical image classification datasets?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07990 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07990/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jan 2024.

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

- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features by Contrasting Cluster Assignments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09882/) (2020)
- [Improved Baselines with Momentum Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04297/) (2020)
- [Barlow Twins: Self-Supervised Learning via Redundancy Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03230/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning by Predicting Image Rotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07728/) (2018)
- [Context Encoders: Feature Learning by Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.07379/) (2016)
- [CheXpert: A Large Chest Radiograph Dataset with Uncertainty Labels and Expert Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07031/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09246/) (2016)
- [Colorful Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08511/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning by Context Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05192/) (2015)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [VICReg: Variance-Invariance-Covariance Regularization for Self-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04906/) (2021)
- [DivideMix: Learning with Noisy Labels as Semi-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07394/) (2020)
- [Learning to Reweight Examples for Robust Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09050/) (2018)
- [Making Deep Neural Networks Robust to Label Noise: a Loss Correction Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03683/) (2016)
- [Using Pre-Training Can Improve Model Robustness and Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09960/) (2019)
- [Certified Defenses for Data Poisoning Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03691/) (2017)
- [Combating noisy labels by agreement: A joint training method with co-regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02752/) (2020)
- [Large Scale Adversarial Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02544/) (2019)
- [Understanding and Utilizing Deep Neural Networks Trained with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05040/) (2019)
- [Deep learning with noisy labels: exploring techniques and remedies in medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02911/) (2019)
- [Self-Path: Self-supervision for Classification of Pathology Images with Limited Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05571/) (2020)
- [Contrast to Divide: Self-Supervised Pre-Training for Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13646/) (2021)
- [Robust Inference via Generative Classifiers for Handling Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.11300/) (2019)
- [Interpreting Chest X-rays via CNNs that Exploit Hierarchical Disease Dependencies and Uncertainty Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12734/) (2020)
- [Investigating Why Contrastive Learning Benefits Robustness Against Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12498/) (2022)
- [How does Early Stopping Help Generalization against Label Noise?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08059/) (2019)
- [Robust Learning at Noisy Labeled Medical Images: Applied to Skin Lesion Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07759/) (2019)
- [Robust Medical Image Classification from Noisy Labeled Data with Global and Local Representation Guided Co-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04723/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Joint Embedding vs Reconstruction: Provable Benefits of Latent Space Prediction for Self Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12477/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Noisy labels can significantly impact medical image classification, particularly in deep learning, by corrupting learned features. Self-supervised pretraining, which doesn't rely on labeled data, can enhance robustness against noisy labels. However, this robustness varies based on factors like the number of classes, dataset complexity, and training size. In medical images, subtle inter-class differences and modality-specific characteristics add complexity. Previous research hasn't comprehensively explored the interplay between self-supervised learning and robustness against noisy labels in medical image classification, considering all these factors. In this study, we address three key questions: i) How does label noise impact various medical image classification datasets? ii) Which types of medical image datasets are more challenging to learn and more affected by label noise? iii) How do different self-supervised pretraining methods enhance robustness across various medical image datasets? Our results show that DermNet, among five datasets (Fetal plane, DermNet, COVID-DU-Ex, MURA, NCT-CRC-HE-100K), is the most challenging but exhibits greater robustness against noisy labels. Additionally, contrastive learning stands out among the eight self-supervised methods as the most effective approach to enhance robustness against noisy labels.