On the Element-Wise Representation and Reasoning in Zero-Shot Image Recognition: A Systematic Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Zero-shot image recognition (ZSIR) aims to recognize and reason in unseen domains by learning generalized knowledge from limited data in the seen domain. The gist of ZSIR is constructing a well-aligned mapping between the input visual space and the target semantic space, which is a bottom-up paradigm inspired by the process by which humans observe the world. In recent years, ZSIR has witnessed significant progress on a broad spectrum, from theory to algorithm design, as well as widespread applications. However, to the best of our knowledge, there remains a lack of a systematic review of ZSIR from an element-wise perspective, i.e., learning fine-grained elements of data and their inferential associations. To fill the gap, this paper thoroughly investigates recent advances in element-wise ZSIR and provides a sound basis for its future development. Concretely, we first integrate three basic ZSIR tasks, i.e., object recognition, compositional recognition, and foundation model-based open-world recognition, into a unified element-wise paradigm and provide a detailed taxonomy and analysis of the main approaches. Next, we summarize the benchmarks, covering technical implementations, standardized datasets, and some more details as a library. Last, we sketch out related applications, discuss vital challenges, and suggest potential future directions.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 180 of its 292 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Aug 2024.
Builds on
180 of 292 references.
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50 most cited of 180 All 180 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 4.
5 papers.
- 2024Neuron: Learning Context-Aware Evolving Representations for Zero-Shot Skeleton Action Recognitioncited by 13
- 2025Cluster-Aware Prompt Ensemble Learning for Few-Shot Vision-Language Model Adaptationcited by 7
- 2025SVIP: Semantically Contextualized Visual Patches for Zero-Shot Learningcited by 6
- 2025Distributed Zero-Shot Learning for Visual Recognitioncited by 3
- 2025FedAPA: Server-side Gradient-Based Adaptive Personalized Aggregation for Federated Learning on Heterogeneous Datacited by 0
- 2025Distributed Zero-Shot Learning for Visual Recognition11 Nov 2025
- 2025Cluster-Aware Prompt Ensemble Learning for Few-Shot Vision-Language Model Adaptation10 Oct 2025
- 2025SVIP: Semantically Contextualized Visual Patches for Zero-Shot Learning13 Mar 2025
- 2025FedAPA: Server-side Gradient-Based Adaptive Personalized Aggregation for Federated Learning on Heterogeneous Data11 Feb 2025
- 2024Neuron: Learning Context-Aware Evolving Representations for Zero-Shot Skeleton Action Recognition18 Nov 2024