Semantic Feature Learning for Universal Unsupervised Cross-Domain Retrieval

Cross-domain retrieval (CDR), as a crucial tool for numerous technologies, is finding increasingly broad applications. However, existing efforts face several major issues, with the most critical being the need for accurate supervision, which often demands costly resources and efforts. Cutting-edge studies focus on achieving unsupervised CDR but typically assume that the category spaces across domains are identical, an assumption that is often unrealistic in real-world scenarios. This is because only through dedicated and comprehensive analysis can the category spaces of different domains be confirmed as identical, which contradicts the premise of unsupervised scenarios. Therefore, in this work, we introduce the problem of Universal Unsupervised Cross-Domain Retrieval (U^2CDR) for the first time and design a two-stage semantic feature learning framework to address it. In the first stage, a cross-domain unified prototypical structure is established under the guidance of an instance-prototype-mixed contrastive loss and a semantic-enhanced loss, to counteract category space differences. In the second stage, through a modified adversarial training mechanism, we ensure minimal changes for the established prototypical structure during domain alignment, enabling more accurate nearest-neighbor searching. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets and scenarios, including closet, partial, and open-set CDR, demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art CDR works and some potentially effective studies from other topics in solving U^2CDR challenges.

Paper

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Peer review

Reviewer ssYY7/10 · confidence 4/52024-07-11

Summary

This paper introduces the problem of Universal Unsupervised Cross-Domain Retrieval (U2CDR) and proposes a two-stage semantic feature learning framework to address it. The framework includes a cross-domain unified prototypical structure established through an instance-prototype-mixed contrastive loss and a semantic-enhanced loss in the first stage, and a modified adversarial training mechanism to ensure minimal changes during domain alignment in the second stage. Extensive experiments demonstrate that this approach significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art CDR methods in solving U2CDR challenges.

Strengths

1. This paper addresses a new problem, namely Universal Unsupervised Cross-Domain Retrieval, and proposes an initial solution. 2. The paper first formulates the problem and then introduces the proposed method in a hierarchical manner, which is clear and well-structured. 3. The ability to perform U2CDR has broad implications for various applications, such as image search, product recommendations, and artistic creation.

Weaknesses

1. The main effort of the paper seems to be on designing an optimization method. However, the optimization methods involved appear to be mostly existing ones. The authors should enhance the description of the novelty. 2. Although the paper uses $L_{SPR}$ to maintain the semantic structure within domains, how to maintain the relationship between the positive pairs across domains should be emphasized. 3. The analysis related to the Ablation Study seems insufficient. It would be beneficial to analyze the reasons for the experimental results in Table 4.

Questions

While this paper introduces a new problem, where exactly is the novelty in the methodology section?

Rating

7

Confidence

4

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

No limitations or negative impacts have been identified in this paper.

Reviewer tjhd6/10 · confidence 3/52024-07-11

Summary

This paper tackles the problem of unsupervised cross-domain retrieval. This is the problem where the query and retrieval domains are distinct. For example, in sketch to real retrieval, the system must retrieve the most relevant real images to a query sketch. "Unsupervised" refers to the fact that no labels are available during training, but the images from both domains are available. The authors claim to be the first to investigate the "universal" version of this problem, where the query and retrieval domains are allowed to have disjoint labels spaces. For this problem, the authors propose a two-stage optimization procedure. In the first stage, three losses are used: (1) an instance-wise contrastive loss (2) a cluster-wise contrastive loss and (3) a semantic enhanced loss. In the second stage, the embeddings between domains are aligned with three losses: (1) an adversarial domain alignment loss (2) a contrastive loss and (3) a nearest neighbor matching loss.

Strengths

(1) The method is theoretically motivated. (2) The paper follows a logical orders. (3) Experiments appear to be complete.

Weaknesses

(1) The method is clearly described and seems to be theoretically motivated. However, it is hard to understand intuitively why each loss is necessary. In particular, why we must use six different versions of the contrastive loss across two stages? (IPM, INCE, PNCE, SEL, SPR, SN2M). The theory only seems to justify the IPM loss. (2) In my opinion, even for someone well versed in metric learning, this method is hard to grasp. Some examples: - In line 148, the method applies k-means with a variable number of clusters determined by the "Elbow approach" and a contrastive loss on top of the cluster centroids. Just this one paragraph requires the person implementing the algorithm to reference another paper and implement a clustering algorithm. - The argument, starting at line 152, explaining the IPM loss is hard to understand, mostly because of the unusual notation (arrows and xor symbols). - The argument for the SN2M loss, starting at line 235 is unclear to me. (3) Overall, the method reads like a series of steps that do not follow one central motivation.

Questions

(1) Why do we need two stages of training? Is it really necessary to have two completely different sets of novel loss functions in each stage?

Rating

6

Confidence

3

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

Adequately addressed.

Authorsrebuttal2024-08-13

A Gentle Reminder of Further Feedback to Reviewer tjhd

Dear Reviewer tjhd, As the rebuttal discussion phase ends soon, we want to express our gratitude for your engagement thus far. We really want to check with you whether our response addresses your concerns during the author-reviewer discussion phase. We have diligently addressed every concern and question you raised during the initial review, and our efforts are aimed at enhancing the clarity and quality of our work. We genuinely hope our responses have resolved your concerns related to the design intuition behind our methodology, the detailed description of the Elbow approach, IPM and SN2M losses, and the central motivation of the two-stage design. Your thoughtful evaluation greatly aids in our paper's refinement and strength. Again, we sincerely appreciate your dedication and time. Best regards, Authors of Paper 5055

Reviewer tjhd2024-08-13

Acknowledgement of Rebuttal

Dear Authors, I read the rebuttal and appreciate the additional experiments and clarifications.

Authorsrebuttal2024-08-13

Dear Reviewer tjhd, Thank you for your positive feedback and insightful suggestions. We appreciate your recognition of our efforts to address your concerns and include more experiments. We are committed to expanding these clarifications and experiments to our next revised version. We value your input and sincerely hope you consider raising your rating based on the improvements we’re implementing. Your endorsement would greatly enhance the credibility of our work. We will be also glad to answer any further questions. Best regards, Authors of Paper 5055

Reviewer gZ1R5/10 · confidence 4/52024-07-12

Summary

This paper proposes Universal Unsupervised Cross-Domain Retrieval for the first time and designs a two-stage semantic feature learning framework to address it.

Strengths

This paper proposes a new approach in universal unsupervised domain adaptation, with sufficient experiments to verify its motivation.

Weaknesses

1. In unified unsupervised domain adaptation, there is no handling of instances that are not common categories. Isn't this necessary? 2. From the perspective of innovation, the proposed unified prototype structure is interesting, and the rest is mostly incremental work, such as semantic structure preservation and adjacent feature matching in domain adaptation. From the visualization results, the author failed to prove the above contributions. 3. This paper should reflect the difference between universal domain adaptation and unsupervised domain adaptation. 4. This article does not have a better way to state the method, especially in cross-domain prototype conversion and close neighbor matching.

Questions

See Weaknesses section

Rating

5

Confidence

4

Soundness

3

Presentation

2

Contribution

3

Limitations

no

Authorsrebuttal2024-08-13

A Gentle Reminder of Further Feedback to Reviewer gZ1R

Dear Reviewer gZ1R, The conclusion of the discussion period is closing, and we eagerly await your response. We greatly appreciate your time and effort in reviewing this paper and helping us improve it. Thank you again for the detailed and constructive reviews. We hope our response is able to address your comments related to the handling of uncommon categories, the novelty description of semantic preservation and adjacent feature matching, and clarification of problem settings. We take this as a great opportunity to improve our work and shall be grateful for any additional feedback you could give us. Best Regards, Authors of Paper 5055

Reviewer ssYY2024-08-09

Thanks for the author's response. I decide to raise my score to Accept.

Program Chairsdecision2024-09-25

Decision

Accept (poster)

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