Restoring Forgotten Knowledge in Non-Exemplar Class Incremental Learning through Test-Time Semantic Evolution

Continual learning aims to accumulate knowledge over a data stream while mitigating catastrophic forgetting. In Non-exemplar Class Incremental Learning (NECIL), forgetting arises during incremental optimization because old classes are inaccessible, hindering the retention of prior knowledge. To solve this, previous methods struggle in achieving the stability-plasticity balance in the training stages. However, we note that the testing stage is rarely considered among them, but is promising to be a solution to forgetting. Therefore, we propose RoSE, which is a simple yet effective method that Restores forgotten knowledge through test-time Semantic Evolution. Specifically designed for minimizing forgetting, RoSE is a test-time semantic drift compensation framework that enables more accurate drift estimation in a self-supervised manner. Moreover, to avoid incomplete optimization during online testing, we derive an analytical solution as an alternative to gradient descent. We evaluate RoSE on CIFAR-100, TinyImageNet, and ImageNet100 datasets, under both cold-start and warm-start settings. Our method consistently outperforms most state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods across various scenarios, validating the potential and feasibility of test-time evolution in NECIL.