Semi-Supervised and Unsupervised Deep Visual Learning: A Survey

Abstract: State-of-the-art deep learning models are often trained with a large amount of costly labeled training data. However, requiring exhaustive manual annotations may degrade the model's generalizability in the limited-label regime. Semi-supervised learning and unsupervised learning offer promising paradigms to learn from an abundance of unlabeled visual data. Recent progress in these paradigms has indicated the strong benefits of leveraging unlabeled data to improve model generalization and provide better model initialization. In this survey, we review the recent advanced deep learning algorithms on semi-supervised learning (SSL) and unsupervised learning (UL) for visual recognition from a unified perspective. To offer a holistic understanding of the state-of-the-art in these areas, we propose a unified taxonomy. We categorize existing representative SSL and UL with comprehensive and insightful analysis to highlight their design rationales in different learning scenarios and applications in different computer vision tasks. Lastly, we discuss the emerging trends and open challenges in SSL and UL to shed light on future critical research directions.