CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels

The detrimental impact of noisy labels on the generalization performance of deep neural networks has sparked research interest in learning with noisy labels (LNL). Among the various methods proposed to mitigate this effect, the Co-Teaching method, characterized by co-training with the small-loss cri...

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Main Authors: Jorge K. S. Kamassury, Henrique Pickler, Filipe R. Cordeiro, Danilo Silva
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10912480/
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author Jorge K. S. Kamassury
Henrique Pickler
Filipe R. Cordeiro
Danilo Silva
author_facet Jorge K. S. Kamassury
Henrique Pickler
Filipe R. Cordeiro
Danilo Silva
author_sort Jorge K. S. Kamassury
collection DOAJ
description The detrimental impact of noisy labels on the generalization performance of deep neural networks has sparked research interest in learning with noisy labels (LNL). Among the various methods proposed to mitigate this effect, the Co-Teaching method, characterized by co-training with the small-loss criterion, is one of the most established approaches and is widely employed as a key component in recent LNL methods. Although Co-Teaching can mitigate the overfitting effect, it still remains, especially in scenarios with high rates of label noise in datasets. Strategies from the LNL literature to address this typically include the use of disagreement techniques and alternative loss functions. In this paper, we propose the Cyclic Co-Teaching (CCT) method, which employs cyclic variations in the learning rate and sample retention rate at the mini-batch level, along with a checkpoint mechanism that ensures that training in subsequent cycles always resumes from the best models obtained so far. For optimizing the method, we developed a framework that incorporates a pre-training phase to obtain an optimized vanilla model used to initialize CCT model weights, and a transparent univariate optimization strategy for hyperparameters that does not necessarily require a clean validation set. Experimental results on synthetic and real-world datasets, under different types and levels of noise and employing various neural network architectures, demonstrate that CCT outperforms several state-of-the-art LNL methods in most evaluated scenarios.
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spelling doaj-art-68716c688ca94cc48e283fad00a03b6b2025-08-20T03:01:31ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-0113438434386010.1109/ACCESS.2025.354851010912480CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy LabelsJorge K. S. Kamassury0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8335-9796Henrique Pickler1Filipe R. Cordeiro2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5582-8436Danilo Silva3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6290-7968Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, BrazilDepartment of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, BrazilDepartment of Computing, Visual Computing Laboratory, Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE), Recife, Pernambuco, BrazilDepartment of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, BrazilThe detrimental impact of noisy labels on the generalization performance of deep neural networks has sparked research interest in learning with noisy labels (LNL). Among the various methods proposed to mitigate this effect, the Co-Teaching method, characterized by co-training with the small-loss criterion, is one of the most established approaches and is widely employed as a key component in recent LNL methods. Although Co-Teaching can mitigate the overfitting effect, it still remains, especially in scenarios with high rates of label noise in datasets. Strategies from the LNL literature to address this typically include the use of disagreement techniques and alternative loss functions. In this paper, we propose the Cyclic Co-Teaching (CCT) method, which employs cyclic variations in the learning rate and sample retention rate at the mini-batch level, along with a checkpoint mechanism that ensures that training in subsequent cycles always resumes from the best models obtained so far. For optimizing the method, we developed a framework that incorporates a pre-training phase to obtain an optimized vanilla model used to initialize CCT model weights, and a transparent univariate optimization strategy for hyperparameters that does not necessarily require a clean validation set. Experimental results on synthetic and real-world datasets, under different types and levels of noise and employing various neural network architectures, demonstrate that CCT outperforms several state-of-the-art LNL methods in most evaluated scenarios.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10912480/Co-teachingdeep neural networkscyclic trainingcyclic sample retention ratelearning with noisy labels
spellingShingle Jorge K. S. Kamassury
Henrique Pickler
Filipe R. Cordeiro
Danilo Silva
CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels
IEEE Access
Co-teaching
deep neural networks
cyclic training
cyclic sample retention rate
learning with noisy labels
title CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels
title_full CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels
title_fullStr CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels
title_full_unstemmed CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels
title_short CCT: A Cyclic Co-Teaching Approach to Train Deep Neural Networks With Noisy Labels
title_sort cct a cyclic co teaching approach to train deep neural networks with noisy labels
topic Co-teaching
deep neural networks
cyclic training
cyclic sample retention rate
learning with noisy labels
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10912480/
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AT henriquepickler cctacycliccoteachingapproachtotraindeepneuralnetworkswithnoisylabels
AT filipercordeiro cctacycliccoteachingapproachtotraindeepneuralnetworkswithnoisylabels
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