# When the Small-Loss Trick is Not Enough: Multi-Label Image Classification with Noisy Labels Applied to CCTV Sewer Inspections

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.07689 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07689/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [Generalized Cross Entropy Loss for Training Deep Neural Networks with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07836/) (2018)
- [ImageNet-21K Pretraining for the Masses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10972/) (2021)
- [Learning from Noisy Labels with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08199/) (2020)
- [Early-Learning Regularization Prevents Memorization of Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00151/) (2020)
- [Asymmetric Loss For Multi-Label Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14119/) (2020)
- [Multi-Label Image Recognition with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03582/) (2019)
- [Combating noisy labels by agreement: A joint training method with co-regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02752/) (2020)
- [A disciplined approach to neural network hyper-parameters: Part 1 -- learning rate, batch size, momentum, and weight decay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09820/) (2018)
- [TResNet: High Performance GPU-Dedicated Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13630/) (2020)
- [Attention-Driven Dynamic Graph Convolutional Network for Multi-Label Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02994/) (2020)
- [Multi-Label Classification with Label Graph Superimposing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09243/) (2019)
- [Label Noise Types and Their Effects on Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10471/) (2020)
- [Self-Adaptive Training: Bridging Supervised and Self-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08732/) (2021)
- [Sewer-ML: A Multi-Label Sewer Defect Classification Dataset and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10895/) (2021)
- [On the Effects of Different Types of Label Noise in Multi-Label Remote Sensing Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13975/) (2022)
- [Evaluating Multi-label Classifiers with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08427/) (2021)
- [CCMN: A General Framework for Learning with Class-Conditional Multi-Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07338/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The maintenance of sewerage networks, with their millions of kilometers of pipe, heavily relies on efficient Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) inspections. Many promising approaches based on multi-label image classification have leveraged databases of historical inspection reports to automate these inspections. However, the significant presence of label noise in these databases, although known, has not been addressed. While extensive research has explored the issue of label noise in singlelabel classification (SLC), little attention has been paid to label noise in multi-label classification (MLC). To address this, we first adapted three sample selection SLC methods (Co-teaching, CoSELFIE, and DISC) that have proven robust to label noise. Our findings revealed that sample selection based solely on the small-loss trick can handle complex label noise, but it is sub-optimal. Adapting hybrid sample selection methods to noisy MLC appeared to be a more promising approach. In light of this, we developed a novel method named MHSS (Multi-label Hybrid Sample Selection) based on CoSELFIE. Through an in-depth comparative study, we demonstrated the superior performance of our approach in dealing with both synthetic complex noise and real noise, thus contributing to the ongoing efforts towards effective automation of CCTV sewer pipe inspections.