# Target-Agnostic Calibration under Distribution Shift with Frequency-Aware Gradient Rectification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19830 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19830/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12877/) (2020)
- [CutMix: Regularization Strategy to Train Strong Classifiers with Localizable Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04899/) (2019)
- [Benchmarking Neural Network Robustness to Common Corruptions and Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12261/) (2019)
- [Shortcut Learning in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07780/) (2020)
- [WILDS: A Benchmark of in-the-Wild Distribution Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07421/) (2020)
- [Can You Trust Your Model's Uncertainty? Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Under Dataset Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02530/) (2019)
- [Gradient Surgery for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06782/) (2020)
- [Deep Hashing Network for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07522/) (2017)
- [When Does Label Smoothing Help?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02629/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Uncertainty in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03342/) (2021)
- [Conflict-Averse Gradient Descent for Multi-task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14048/) (2021)
- [Measuring Calibration in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01685/) (2019)
- [Beyond temperature scaling: Obtaining well-calibrated multiclass probabilities with Dirichlet calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12656/) (2019)
- [Calibrating Deep Neural Networks using Focal Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.09437/) (2020)
- [Prompt-aligned Gradient for Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14865/) (2022)
- [On Mixup Training: Improved Calibration and Predictive Uncertainty for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11001/) (2019)
- [A Fourier Perspective on Model Robustness in Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08988/) (2019)
- [How Does Mixup Help With Robustness and Generalization?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04819/) (2020)
- [Improving model calibration with accuracy versus uncertainty optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07923/) (2020)
- [Soft Calibration Objectives for Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00106/) (2021)
- [Post-hoc Uncertainty Calibration for Domain Drift Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10988/) (2020)
- [Robust Calibration with Multi-domain Temperature Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02757/) (2022)
- [Dual Focal Loss for Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13665/) (2023)
- [What do neural networks learn in image classification? A frequency shortcut perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09829/) (2023)
- [Beyond Deep Ensembles: A Large-Scale Evaluation of Bayesian Deep Learning under Distribution Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12306/) (2023)
- [Fourier-basis Functions to Bridge Augmentation Gap: Rethinking Frequency Augmentation in Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01944/) (2024)
- [Beyond In-Domain Scenarios: Robust Density-Aware Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05118/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Forecasting the Past: Gradient-Based Distribution Shift Detection in Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12425/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Real-world model deployments inevitably encounter distribution shifts, rendering the confidence estimates of deep neural networks highly unreliable, posing severe risks in safety-critical applications. Existing methods improve calibration via training-time regularization or post-hoc adjustment, but often rely on access to (or simulation of) target domains, limiting practicality. We propose Frequency-aware Gradient Rectification (FGR), a target-agnostic training framework for robust calibration. From a frequency perspective, FGR applies low-pass filtering to a subset of training images to diminish spurious high-frequency cues and encourage the learning of domain-invariant features. However, the associated information loss can degrade In-Distribution (ID) calibration. To resolve this trade-off, FGR treats ID calibration as a hard constraint and rectifies conflicting parameter updates via geometric projection. This ensures a first-order non-increase in the ID calibration objective without introducing an additional loss-balancing coefficient. Extensive experiments on synthetic, real-world, and semantic shift datasets demonstrate that FGR significantly improves calibration under diverse shifts while preserving ID performance, and it remains compatible with post-hoc calibration methods. Our code is available at https://github.com/YilinZhang107/FGR-Calib.