DualFete: Revisiting Teacher-Student Interactions from a Feedback Perspective for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yi, Le, Huang, Wei, Zhang, Lei, Zhao, Kefu, Wang, Yan, Wang, Zizhou
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Yi, Le
Huang, Wei
Zhang, Lei
Zhao, Kefu
Wang, Yan
Wang, Zizhou
author_facet Yi, Le
Huang, Wei
Zhang, Lei
Zhao, Kefu
Wang, Yan
Wang, Zizhou
contents The teacher-student paradigm has emerged as a canonical framework in semi-supervised learning. When applied to medical image segmentation, the paradigm faces challenges due to inherent image ambiguities, making it particularly vulnerable to erroneous supervision. Crucially, the student's iterative reconfirmation of these errors leads to self-reinforcing bias. While some studies attempt to mitigate this bias, they often rely on external modifications to the conventional teacher-student framework, overlooking its intrinsic potential for error correction. In response, this work introduces a feedback mechanism into the teacher-student framework to counteract error reconfirmations. Here, the student provides feedback on the changes induced by the teacher's pseudo-labels, enabling the teacher to refine these labels accordingly. We specify that this interaction hinges on two key components: the feedback attributor, which designates pseudo-labels triggering the student's update, and the feedback receiver, which determines where to apply this feedback. Building on this, a dual-teacher feedback model is further proposed, which allows more dynamics in the feedback loop and fosters more gains by resolving disagreements through cross-teacher supervision while avoiding consistent errors. Comprehensive evaluations on three medical image benchmarks demonstrate the method's effectiveness in addressing error propagation in semi-supervised medical image segmentation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_09319
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DualFete: Revisiting Teacher-Student Interactions from a Feedback Perspective for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation
Yi, Le
Huang, Wei
Zhang, Lei
Zhao, Kefu
Wang, Yan
Wang, Zizhou
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The teacher-student paradigm has emerged as a canonical framework in semi-supervised learning. When applied to medical image segmentation, the paradigm faces challenges due to inherent image ambiguities, making it particularly vulnerable to erroneous supervision. Crucially, the student's iterative reconfirmation of these errors leads to self-reinforcing bias. While some studies attempt to mitigate this bias, they often rely on external modifications to the conventional teacher-student framework, overlooking its intrinsic potential for error correction. In response, this work introduces a feedback mechanism into the teacher-student framework to counteract error reconfirmations. Here, the student provides feedback on the changes induced by the teacher's pseudo-labels, enabling the teacher to refine these labels accordingly. We specify that this interaction hinges on two key components: the feedback attributor, which designates pseudo-labels triggering the student's update, and the feedback receiver, which determines where to apply this feedback. Building on this, a dual-teacher feedback model is further proposed, which allows more dynamics in the feedback loop and fosters more gains by resolving disagreements through cross-teacher supervision while avoiding consistent errors. Comprehensive evaluations on three medical image benchmarks demonstrate the method's effectiveness in addressing error propagation in semi-supervised medical image segmentation.
title DualFete: Revisiting Teacher-Student Interactions from a Feedback Perspective for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09319