Mutual Learning for Hashing: Unlocking Strong Hash Functions from Weak Supervision

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ma, Xiaoxu, Li, Runhao, Weng, Zhenyu
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866909832354725888
author Ma, Xiaoxu
Li, Runhao
Weng, Zhenyu
author_facet Ma, Xiaoxu
Li, Runhao
Weng, Zhenyu
contents Deep hashing has been widely adopted for large-scale image retrieval, with numerous strategies proposed to optimize hash function learning. Pairwise-based methods are effective in learning hash functions that preserve local similarity relationships, whereas center-based methods typically achieve superior performance by more effectively capturing global data distributions. However, the strength of center-based methods in modeling global structures often comes at the expense of underutilizing important local similarity information. To address this limitation, we propose Mutual Learning for Hashing (MLH), a novel weak-to-strong framework that enhances a center-based hashing branch by transferring knowledge from a weaker pairwise-based branch. MLH consists of two branches: a strong center-based branch and a weaker pairwise-based branch. Through an iterative mutual learning process, the center-based branch leverages local similarity cues learned by the pairwise-based branch. Furthermore, inspired by the mixture-of-experts paradigm, we introduce a novel mixture-of-hash-experts module that enables effective cross-branch interaction, further enhancing the performance of both branches. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MLH consistently outperforms state-of-the-art hashing methods across multiple benchmark datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_07703
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mutual Learning for Hashing: Unlocking Strong Hash Functions from Weak Supervision
Ma, Xiaoxu
Li, Runhao
Weng, Zhenyu
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Deep hashing has been widely adopted for large-scale image retrieval, with numerous strategies proposed to optimize hash function learning. Pairwise-based methods are effective in learning hash functions that preserve local similarity relationships, whereas center-based methods typically achieve superior performance by more effectively capturing global data distributions. However, the strength of center-based methods in modeling global structures often comes at the expense of underutilizing important local similarity information. To address this limitation, we propose Mutual Learning for Hashing (MLH), a novel weak-to-strong framework that enhances a center-based hashing branch by transferring knowledge from a weaker pairwise-based branch. MLH consists of two branches: a strong center-based branch and a weaker pairwise-based branch. Through an iterative mutual learning process, the center-based branch leverages local similarity cues learned by the pairwise-based branch. Furthermore, inspired by the mixture-of-experts paradigm, we introduce a novel mixture-of-hash-experts module that enables effective cross-branch interaction, further enhancing the performance of both branches. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MLH consistently outperforms state-of-the-art hashing methods across multiple benchmark datasets.
title Mutual Learning for Hashing: Unlocking Strong Hash Functions from Weak Supervision
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07703