arXiv:2606.30365cs.CV2026-06

提出统一因果框架,同时消除背景和前景干扰,提升度量学习泛化能力。

CouCE: A Unified Causal Framework for Debiased Deep Metric Learning

论文配图:CouCE: A Unified Causal Framework for Debiased Deep Metric Learning
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 构建因果嵌入模型,分别处理背景和前景的混淆因素。
  • 在三个数据集上实现当前最佳性能,零样本泛化显著提升。
  • 可无缝接入现有损失函数,训练开销小,适合实际部署。

深度度量学习(DML)在零样本泛化中表现不佳,因其标准目标捕捉的是共现关系而非因果相似性。模型易受两类结构不同的混淆因素影响:背景虚假相关(通过场景上下文形成后门路径)和前景噪声扰动(引入姿态、光照等非语义变化)。现有方法仅针对单一路径设计,无法同时解决。为此,我们提出统一因果框架——反事实因果嵌入(CouCE),显式建模并中和两类混淆因素。具体地,提出正交字典后门调整(ODBA),将虚假背景模式隔离至方差门控字典,并通过软正交正则化稳定解耦;同时设计多尺度随机因果干预(MSRCI),通过多尺度傅里叶振幅随机化与对称KL不变性约束,强制对抗前景噪声。值得注意的是,CouCE可无缝集成于任意基于代理的损失函数,训练开销低且推理无需修改架构。在CUB-200-2011、Cars-196和Stanford Online Products上的大量实验表明,其持续达到最先进性能,为去偏度量学习提供了一个原理清晰且鲁棒的解决方案。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Deep Metric Learning (DML) often struggles with zero-shot generalization because standard objectives inherently capture what co-occurs rather than what causes similarity. Consequently, DML models are vulnerable to shortcut learning driven by two structurally distinct confounders: background spurious correlations (which create backdoor paths via scene context) and foreground nuisance perturbations (which inject non-semantic variations like pose or illumination). Although existing methods have proposed targeted solutions for each pathway individually, none can simultaneously address both due to their fundamentally distinct causal roles. To bridge this gap, we propose the Counterfactual Causal Embedding (CouCE), a unified causal framework that explicitly models and neutralizes both confounders. Specifically, we introduce Orthogonal Dictionary-Based Backdoor Adjustment (ODBA), which isolates spurious background patterns into a variance-gated dictionary and stably disentangles them from the learned embeddings via soft orthogonal regularization. Simultaneously, we propose Multi-Scale Randomized Causal Intervention (MSRCI) to enforce causal invariance against foreground nuisances through multi-scale Fourier amplitude randomization and a symmetric KL invariance constraint. Notably, CouCE seamlessly integrates with any proxy-based loss, incurring modest training overhead without requiring architectural modifications during inference. Extensive experiments on CUB-200-2011, Cars-196, and Stanford Online Products demonstrate that CouCE consistently achieves state-of-the-art performance, providing a principled and robust solution for debiased DML.

度量学习因果推断去偏图像检索

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