# Learning at a Glance: Towards Interpretable Data-limited Continual Semantic Segmentation via Semantic-Invariance Modelling

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.15429 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15429/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 72 of its 108 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 72)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [Experience Replay for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11682/) (2018)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [Striving for Simplicity: The All Convolutional Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6806/) (2014)
- [Grad-CAM++: Improved Visual Explanations for Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11063/) (2017)
- [Riemannian Walk for Incremental Learning: Understanding Forgetting and Intransigence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10112/) (2018)
- [Gradient based sample selection for online continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08671/) (2019)
- [Fooling LIME and SHAP: Adversarial Attacks on Post hoc Explanation Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02508/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Towards Medical XAI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07374/) (2019)
- [DER: Dynamically Expandable Representation for Class Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16788/) (2021)
- [StyleSpace Analysis: Disentangled Controls for StyleGAN Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12799/) (2020)
- [Variational Information Distillation for Knowledge Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05835/) (2019)
- [Knowledge Distillation and Student-Teacher Learning for Visual Intelligence: A Review and New Outlooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05937/) (2020)
- [BiSeNet V2: Bilateral Network with Guided Aggregation for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02147/) (2020)
- [Rainbow Memory: Continual Learning with a Memory of Diverse Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17230/) (2021)
- [DRIT++: Diverse Image-to-Image Translation via Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01270/) (2019)
- [Modeling the Background for Incremental Learning in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00718/) (2020)
- [Meta-Learning Representations for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12588/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [SAMCL: Empowering SAM to Continually Learn from Dynamic Domains with Extreme Storage Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05012/) (2024)
- [ProtoFlow: Mitigating Forgetting in Class-Incremental Remote Sensing Segmentation via Low-Curvature Prototype Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03212/) (2026)
- [RegCL: Compact Continual SAM Adaptation for Visual Grounding in Multi-Sensorial Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12297/) (2025)
- [Reconciling Semantic Controllability and Diversity for Remote Sensing Image Synthesis with Hybrid Semantic Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14781/) (2024)
- [Evolving Without Ending: Unifying Multimodal Incremental Learning for Continual Panoptic Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15643/) (2026)
- [FSE: Continual Learning for Named Entity Recognition by Fast-Slow Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22075/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Continual semantic segmentation (CSS) based on incremental learning (IL) is a great endeavour in developing human-like segmentation models. However, current CSS approaches encounter challenges in the trade-off between preserving old knowledge and learning new ones, where they still need large-scale annotated data for incremental training and lack interpretability. In this paper, we present Learning at a Glance (LAG), an efficient, robust, human-like and interpretable approach for CSS. Specifically, LAG is a simple and model-agnostic architecture, yet it achieves competitive CSS efficiency with limited incremental data. Inspired by human-like recognition patterns, we propose a semantic-invariance modelling approach via semantic features decoupling that simultaneously reconciles solid knowledge inheritance and new-term learning. Concretely, the proposed decoupling manner includes two ways, i.e., channel-wise decoupling and spatial-level neuron-relevant semantic consistency. Our approach preserves semantic-invariant knowledge as solid prototypes to alleviate catastrophic forgetting, while also constraining sample-specific contents through an asymmetric contrastive learning method to enhance model robustness during IL steps. Experimental results in multiple datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, we introduce a novel CSS protocol that better reflects realistic data-limited CSS settings, and LAG achieves superior performance under multiple data-limited conditions.