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Revisiting multi-dimensional classification from a dimension-wise perspective

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Abstract

Real-world objects exhibit intricate semantic properties that can be characterized from a multitude of perspectives, which necessitates the development of a model capable of discerning multiple patterns within data, while concurrently predicting several Labeling Dimensions (LDs) — a task known as Multi-dimensional Classification (MDC). While the class imbalance issue has been extensively investigated within the multi-class paradigm, its study in the MDC context has been limited due to the imbalance shift phenomenon. A sample’s classification as a minor or major class instance becomes ambiguous when it belongs to a minor class in one LD and a major class in another. Previous MDC methodologies predominantly emphasized instance-wise criteria, neglecting prediction capabilities from a dimension aspect, i.e., the average classification performance across LDs. We assert the significance of dimension-wise metrics in real-world MDC applications and introduce two such metrics. Furthermore, we observe imbalanced class distributions within each LD and propose a novel Imbalance-Aware fusion Model (IMAM) for addressing the MDC problem. Specifically, we first decompose the task into multiple multi-class classification problems, creating imbalance-aware deep models for each LD separately. This straightforward method performs well across LDs without sacrificing performance in instance-wise criteria. Subsequently, we employ LD-wise models as multiple teachers and transfer their knowledge across all LDs to a unified student model. Experimental results on several real-world datasets demonstrate that our IMAM approach excels in both instance-wise evaluations and the proposed dimension-wise metrics.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2020AAA0109401, 2020AAA0109405), (62376118, 62006112, 62250069, 62206245), the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program of Jiangsu Association for Science and the Technology 2021–020, Collaborative Innovation Center of Novel Software Technology and Industrialization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210046, China

    Yi Shi, Hanjia Ye, Dechuan Zhan & Yuan Jiang

  2. Department of Laboratory Medicine, The First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, 110001, China

    Dongliang Man & Xiaoxu Han

  3. National Clinical Research Center for Laboratory Medicine, The First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, 110001, China

    Dongliang Man & Xiaoxu Han

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  1. Yi Shi
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Correspondence to Hanjia Ye.

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Yi Shi received the master degree in computer science from Nanjing University, China in 2022. At the same year, he became a PhD student with the School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, China. His research interests are mainly in machine learning and data mining, including distance metric learning, multi-modal/multi-task learning, and semantic mining.

Hanjia Ye received the PhD degree in computer science from Nanjing University, China in 2019. At the same year, he became a faculty member with the School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, China. His research interests lie primarily in machine learning, including distance metric learning, multi-modal/multi-task learning, meta-learning, and semantic mining. He serves as PC in leading conferences such as ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ICML, and NeurIPS.

Dongliang Man received the BA degree in medicine clinical laboratory diagnostics from China Medical University, China in 2010. At the same year, he became a faculty member with the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the First Hospital of China Medical University, China. He is currently a lecturer and PhD student with China Medical University, China. He has authored or coauthored more than 10 papers in national and international journals. His research interests include laboratory medicine and laboratory medicine intelligence.

Xiaoxu Han received the MD degree in clinical medicine from China Medical University, China in 2006. At the same year, she became a faculty member with the First Hospital of China Medical University, China. She is currently a professor with China Medical University. She has authored or coauthored more than 100 papers in national and international journals. Her research interests include molecular diagnostic techniques and laboratory medicine intelligence. She is an invited reviewer for J Biol Chem, BMC Genomics, Virologica Sinica, and other journals. She is currently the vice director of the National Clinical Research Center for Laboratory Medicine, vice director of the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the First Hospital of China Medical University, and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the Key Laboratory of AIDS Immunology of the National Health Care Commission.

Dechuan Zhan received the PhD degree in computer science from Nanjing University, China in 2010. At the same year, he became a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University, China. He is currently a professor with the School of Artificial Intelligence at Nanjing University from since 2019. His research interests are mainly in machine learning and data mining. Up until now, He has published over 90 papers in national and international journals or conferences such as TPAMI, TKDD, TIFS, TSMSB, IJCAI, AAAI, ICML, NeurIPS, serves as the editorial board member of IDA and IJAPR, and as SPC/PCs in leading conferences such as IJCAI, AAAI, ICML, NeurIPS. He is the deputy director of LAMDA group, NJU.

Yuan Jiang is now a full professor in School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University, China. She received the PhD degree in computer science from Nanjing University, China in 2004. Her research interests are mainly in machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence applications. She has published more than 50 papers in leading international/national journals and conferences. She was selected in the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, Ministry of Education in 2009.

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Shi, Y., Ye, H., Man, D. et al. Revisiting multi-dimensional classification from a dimension-wise perspective. Front. Comput. Sci. 19, 191304 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-023-3272-9

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