# HybridVFL: Disentangled Feature Learning for Edge-Enabled Vertical Federated Multimodal Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.10701 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10701/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning: Challenges, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07873/) (2019)
- [Multimodal Machine Learning: A Survey and Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09406/) (2017)
- [Challenging Common Assumptions in the Unsupervised Learning of Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12359/) (2018)
- [Model-Contrastive Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16257/) (2021)
- [Multimodal Transformer for Unaligned Multimodal Language Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00295/) (2019)
- [Federated Machine Learning: Concept and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.04885/) (2019)
- [Private federated learning on vertically partitioned data via entity resolution and additively homomorphic encryption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10677/) (2017)
- [SecureBoost: A Lossless Federated Learning Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08755/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning for Medical Image Analysis: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05980/) (2023)
- [CAFE: Catastrophic Data Leakage in Vertical Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15122/) (2021)
- [Collaborative Federated Learning For Healthcare: Multi-Modal COVID-19 Diagnosis at the Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07511/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Vertical Federated Learning: From a Layered Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01829/) (2023)
- [Communication-Efficient Multimodal Federated Learning: Joint Modality and Client Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16685/) (2024)
- [Cross-Modal Vertical Federated Learning for MRI Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02673/) (2023)
- [Federated Modality-specific Encoders and Multimodal Anchors for Personalized Brain Tumor Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11803/) (2024)
- [A Distributed Privacy Preserving Model for the Detection of Alzheimer's Disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10237/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) offers a privacy-preserving paradigm for Edge AI scenarios like mobile health diagnostics, where sensitive multimodal data reside on distributed, resource-constrained devices. Yet, standard VFL systems often suffer performance limitations due to simplistic feature fusion. This paper introduces HybridVFL, a novel framework designed to overcome this bottleneck by employing client-side feature disentanglement paired with a server-side cross-modal transformer for context-aware fusion. Through systematic evaluation on the multimodal HAM10000 skin lesion dataset, we demonstrate that HybridVFL significantly outperforms standard federated baselines, validating the criticality of advanced fusion mechanisms in robust, privacy-preserving systems.