Paper Reading AI Learner

Query-Conditioned Prototype Adaptation for Cross-Domain Few-Shot Learning: Single-Query Inference, Controlled Comparisons, and Failure Modes

2026-09-25 03:49:42
Rushab Rasik Karania, Tomas Maul

Abstract

Cross-domain few-shot learning requires adapting a classifier to a new visual domain from very few labelled examples without target-time parameter updates. We isolate one question: under a fixed global representation, what does joint query-support adaptation contribute to prototype construction? The Within-Instance Prototypical Transformer (WIPT) implements single-query test-time prototype adaptation by jointly transforming one unlabelled query and the labelled support embeddings, then forming query-specific class means. Using a shared frozen ViT-S/16 encoder, miniImageNet source training, and CUB, EuroSAT and ISIC targets, we replicate the key comparisons across five independent training seeds. In 1-shot evaluation, WIPT improves frozen ProtoNet in every run on CUB (+0.21 percentage points) and EuroSAT (+2.07), but decreases ISIC (-0.22). In 5-shot evaluation, ProtoNet remains strongest overall, while WIPT consistently improves a capacity-matched support-only Transformer on ISIC (+0.99). Joint processing of up to five queries yields no reliable accuracy gain; in a head-only 5-shot benchmark, g = 5 reduces analytical attention-token pairs by 73% and peak allocated memory by 29% relative to g = 1, although latency is non-monotonic. Across all target/shot conditions, WIPT changes uncertain ProtoNet decisions far more than confident ones, and rescue/break decomposition accounts for the observed gains and losses. Source-shift and scorer controls further show that the benefit is not universal. Overall, WIPT provides a streaming-compatible form of test-time prototype adaptation that can improve difficult low-shot cross-domain decisions without target-time optimization.

Abstract (translated)

URL

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.30769

PDF

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.30769.pdf


Tags
3D Action Action_Localization Action_Recognition Activity Adversarial Agent Attention Autonomous Bert Boundary_Detection Caption Chat Classification CNN Compressive_Sensing Contour Contrastive_Learning Deep_Learning Denoising Detection Dialog Diffusion Drone Dynamic_Memory_Network Edge_Detection Embedding Embodied Emotion Enhancement Face Face_Detection Face_Recognition Facial_Landmark Few-Shot Gait_Recognition GAN Gaze_Estimation Gesture Gradient_Descent Handwriting Human_Parsing Image_Caption Image_Classification Image_Compression Image_Enhancement Image_Generation Image_Matting Image_Retrieval Inference Inpainting Intelligent_Chip Knowledge Knowledge_Graph Language_Model LLM Matching Medical Memory_Networks Multi_Modal Multi_Task NAS NMT Object_Detection Object_Tracking OCR Ontology Optical_Character Optical_Flow Optimization Person_Re-identification Point_Cloud Portrait_Generation Pose Pose_Estimation Prediction QA Quantitative Quantitative_Finance Quantization Re-identification Recognition Recommendation Reconstruction Regularization Reinforcement_Learning Relation Relation_Extraction Represenation Represenation_Learning Restoration Review RNN Robot Salient Scene_Classification Scene_Generation Scene_Parsing Scene_Text Segmentation Self-Supervised Semantic_Instance_Segmentation Semantic_Segmentation Semi_Global Semi_Supervised Sence_graph Sentiment Sentiment_Classification Sketch SLAM Sparse Speech Speech_Recognition Style_Transfer Summarization Super_Resolution Surveillance Survey Text_Classification Text_Generation Time_Series Tracking Transfer_Learning Transformer Unsupervised Video_Caption Video_Classification Video_Indexing Video_Prediction Video_Retrieval Visual_Relation VQA Weakly_Supervised Zero-Shot