GPF-Net: Gated Progressive Fusion Learning for Polyp Re-Identification

Colonoscopic Polyp Re-Identification (ReID) aims to match the same polyp across a large gallery of images captured from different viewpoints and with different cameras, playing a critical role in computer-aided diagnosis for the prevention and treatment of colorectal cancer. However, the coarse granularity of high-level features often limits performance on small polyps, where fine-grained details are essential for accurate matching. To address this challenge, we propose a novel multimodal feature fusion architecture, termed the Gated Progressive Fusion Network, which selectively integrates features from multiple levels through fully connected gating mechanisms. Building on this framework, we introduce a gated progressive fusion strategy that enables layer-wise refinement of semantic information, facilitating multi-level feature interactions to enhance both generalization ability and robustness. Extensive experiments on standard benchmarks demonstrate the advantages of the multimodal setting over state-of-the-art unimodal ReID models, particularly when combined with the proposed fusion strategy tailored for general-purpose scenarios.