# Task-Sensitive Geometry of Representation Transfer for Object Detection under Image Degradation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04627 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04627/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04687/) (2018)
- [Task2Vec: Task Embedding for Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03545/) (2019)
- [Distilling Object Detectors with Fine-grained Feature Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.03609/) (2019)
- [Focal and Global Knowledge Distillation for Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11837/) (2021)
- [General Instance Distillation for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02340/) (2021)
- [Distilling Object Detectors via Decoupled Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14475/) (2021)
- [CrossKD: Cross-Head Knowledge Distillation for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11369/) (2023)
- [UniRestore: Unified Perceptual and Task-Oriented Image Restoration Model Using Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13134/) (2025)
- [Beyond Image Super-Resolution for Image Recognition with Task-Driven Perceptual Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01692/) (2024)
- [KD-DETR: Knowledge Distillation for Detection Transformer with Consistent Distillation Points Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08071/) (2022)
- [RestoreX-AI: A Contrastive Approach towards Guiding Image Restoration via Explainable AI Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01719/) (2022)
- [ERUP-YOLO: Enhancing Object Detection Robustness for Adverse Weather Condition by Unified Image-Adaptive Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02799/) (2024)
- [Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Task-driven Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22459/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object detection under image degradation can benefit from clean-image supervision, but aggregate gains do not imply that transferred representation changes are uniformly useful. We study how clean task knowledge affects degraded-image representations and whether local responses to structured representation directions can be characterized geometrically. Using paired clean and Gaussian-degraded BDD100K images, we show that clean-teacher distillation improves observed detection accuracy while producing heterogeneous object-level transfer. We isolate a representation component complementary to direct clean-teacher alignment and map it into the distilled student space through an orthogonal bridge. Controlled interventions rescue 13.22% of objects lost under the distilled representation, versus 4.30% under norm-matched random perturbations, with very low harm on preserved objects. We introduce task-sensitive geometry, a gradient-derived channel-space geometry constructed from normalized detection-loss gradients. On a reserved cohort, mapped-complement orientation within this frozen geometry is positively associated with local intervention-response magnitude after controlling for intervention magnitude (partial Spearman ρ = 0.242, 95% CI [0.108, 0.359]). The relationship eplicates on independent data (ρ = 0.180) and with RT-DETR-L (ρ = 0.227), but not for the direct clean-teacher residual family, and it weakens for large interventions. Routing rules and specialized distillation objectives based on these signals do not yield statistically reliable gains over CLEANKD. These results support a local, direction-family-dependent task-sensitive geometry while showing that converting such structure into improved global training remains an open problem.