Self-Supervised Learning Based on Transformed Image Reconstruction for Equivariance-Coherent Feature Representation

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Wang, Qin, Quercia, Alessio, Bruns, Benjamin, Morrison, Abigail, Scharr, Hanno, Krajsek, Kai
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866917261597474816
author Wang, Qin
Quercia, Alessio
Bruns, Benjamin
Morrison, Abigail
Scharr, Hanno
Krajsek, Kai
author_facet Wang, Qin
Quercia, Alessio
Bruns, Benjamin
Morrison, Abigail
Scharr, Hanno
Krajsek, Kai
contents Self-supervised learning (SSL) methods have achieved remarkable success in learning image representations allowing invariances in them - but therefore discarding transformation information that some computer vision tasks actually require. While recent approaches attempt to address this limitation by learning equivariant features using linear operators in feature space, they impose restrictive assumptions that constrain flexibility and generalization. We introduce a weaker definition for the transformation relation between image and feature space denoted as equivariance-coherence. We propose a novel SSL auxiliary task that learns equivariance-coherent representations through intermediate transformation reconstruction, which can be integrated with existing joint embedding SSL methods. Our key idea is to reconstruct images at intermediate points along transformation paths, e.g. when training on 30-degree rotations, we reconstruct the 10-degree and 20-degree rotation states. Reconstructing intermediate states requires the transformation information used in augmentations, rather than suppressing it, and therefore fosters features containing the augmented transformation information. Our method decomposes feature vectors into invariant and equivariant parts, training them with standard SSL losses and reconstruction losses, respectively. We demonstrate substantial improvements on synthetic equivariance benchmarks while maintaining competitive performance on downstream tasks requiring invariant representations. The approach seamlessly integrates with existing SSL methods (iBOT, DINOv2) and consistently enhances performance across diverse tasks, including segmentation, detection, depth estimation, and video dense prediction. Our framework provides a practical way for augmenting SSL methods with equivariant capabilities while preserving invariant performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_18753
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Self-Supervised Learning Based on Transformed Image Reconstruction for Equivariance-Coherent Feature Representation
Wang, Qin
Quercia, Alessio
Bruns, Benjamin
Morrison, Abigail
Scharr, Hanno
Krajsek, Kai
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Self-supervised learning (SSL) methods have achieved remarkable success in learning image representations allowing invariances in them - but therefore discarding transformation information that some computer vision tasks actually require. While recent approaches attempt to address this limitation by learning equivariant features using linear operators in feature space, they impose restrictive assumptions that constrain flexibility and generalization. We introduce a weaker definition for the transformation relation between image and feature space denoted as equivariance-coherence. We propose a novel SSL auxiliary task that learns equivariance-coherent representations through intermediate transformation reconstruction, which can be integrated with existing joint embedding SSL methods. Our key idea is to reconstruct images at intermediate points along transformation paths, e.g. when training on 30-degree rotations, we reconstruct the 10-degree and 20-degree rotation states. Reconstructing intermediate states requires the transformation information used in augmentations, rather than suppressing it, and therefore fosters features containing the augmented transformation information. Our method decomposes feature vectors into invariant and equivariant parts, training them with standard SSL losses and reconstruction losses, respectively. We demonstrate substantial improvements on synthetic equivariance benchmarks while maintaining competitive performance on downstream tasks requiring invariant representations. The approach seamlessly integrates with existing SSL methods (iBOT, DINOv2) and consistently enhances performance across diverse tasks, including segmentation, detection, depth estimation, and video dense prediction. Our framework provides a practical way for augmenting SSL methods with equivariant capabilities while preserving invariant performance.
title Self-Supervised Learning Based on Transformed Image Reconstruction for Equivariance-Coherent Feature Representation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.18753