# Mixed Blessing: Class-Wise Embedding guided Instance-Dependent Partial Label Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05029 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05029/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Fine-Grained Visual Classification of Aircraft](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.5151/) (2013)
- [Query2Label: A Simple Transformer Way to Multi-Label Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10834/) (2021)
- [General Multi-label Image Classification with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14027/) (2020)
- [Progressive Identification of True Labels for Partial-Label Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08053/) (2020)
- [Provably Consistent Partial-Label Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08929/) (2020)
- [Instance-Dependent Partial Label Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.12911/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Weakly-Supervised Contrastive Learning for Imprecise Class Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22028/) (2025)
- [Partial Label Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03207/) (2025)
- [Exploiting the Potential Supervision Information of Clean Samples in Partial Label Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09354/) (2025)
- [Amortized Variational Inference for Partial-Label Learning: A Probabilistic Approach to Label Disambiguation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21300/) (2025)
- [Mitigating Instance Entanglement in Instance-Dependent Partial Label Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04825/) (2026)
- [Holistic Optimal Label Selection for Robust Prompt Learning under Partial Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06614/) (2026)
- [Deep Hierarchical Knowledge Loss for Fault Intensity Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16459/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In partial label learning (PLL), every sample is associated with a candidate label set comprising the ground-truth label and several noisy labels. The conventional PLL assumes the noisy labels are randomly generated (instance-independent), while in practical scenarios, the noisy labels are always instance-dependent and are highly related to the sample features, leading to the instance-dependent partial label learning (IDPLL) problem. Instance-dependent noisy label is a double-edged sword. On one side, it may promote model training as the noisy labels can depict the sample to some extent. On the other side, it brings high label ambiguity as the noisy labels are quite undistinguishable from the ground-truth label. To leverage the nuances of IDPLL effectively, for the first time we create class-wise embeddings for each sample, which allow us to explore the relationship of instance-dependent noisy labels, i.e., the class-wise embeddings in the candidate label set should have high similarity, while the class-wise embeddings between the candidate label set and the non-candidate label set should have high dissimilarity. Moreover, to reduce the high label ambiguity, we introduce the concept of class prototypes containing global feature information to disambiguate the candidate label set. Extensive experimental comparisons with twelve methods on six benchmark data sets, including four fine-grained data sets, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The code implementation is publicly available at https://github.com/Yangfc-ML/CEL.