Relational Retrieval: Leveraging Known-Novel Interactions for Generalized Category Discovery

arXiv:2605.09420v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In this study, we tackle Generalized Category Discovery (GCD) via a Relational Retrieval perspective, explicitly coupling labeled and unlabeled data through bidirectional knowledge transfer. While existing methods treat these sources separately, missing valuable interaction opportunities, we propose Relational Pattern Consistency (RPC) that enables mutual enhancement. RPC employs One-vs-All classifiers for soft ID/OOD decomposition, then introduces two mechanisms: (i) for known-class preservation, we transfer semantic behavioral alignment; (ii) for category discovery, we leverage the insight that samples from the same category maintain invariant relationships with known-class prototypes, transforming unreliable pseudo-labeling into well-defined relational pattern matching. This bidirectional design allows labeled data to guide unlabeled learning while discovering novel categories through their collective relational signatures. Extensive experiments demonstrate RPC achieves state-of-the-art performance on both generic and fine-grained benchmarks.

Abstract:In this study, we tackle Generalized Category Discovery (GCD) via a Relational Retrieval perspective, explicitly coupling labeled and unlabeled data through bidirectional knowledge transfer. While existing methods treat these sources separately, missing valuable interaction opportunities, we propose Relational Pattern Consistency (RPC) that enables mutual enhancement. RPC employs One-vs-All classifiers for soft ID/OOD decomposition, then introduces two mechanisms: (i) for known-class preservation, we transfer semantic behavioral alignment; (ii) for category discovery, we leverage the insight that samples from the same category maintain invariant relationships with known-class prototypes, transforming unreliable pseudo-labeling into well-defined relational pattern matching. This bidirectional design allows labeled data to guide unlabeled learning while discovering novel categories through their collective relational signatures. Extensive experiments demonstrate RPC achieves state-of-the-art performance on both generic and fine-grained benchmarks.

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Multimedia (cs.MM)

arXiv:2605.09420 [cs.CV]

(or arXiv:2605.09420v3 [cs.CV] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.09420 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Proceedings of the 2026 ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR '26), pp. 410-414, 2026

https://doi.org/10.1145/3805622.3810732 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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Relational Retrieval: Leveraging Known-Novel Interactions for Generalized Category Discovery

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