No Re-Train, More Gain: Upgrading Backbones with Diffusion model for Pixel-Wise and Weakly-Supervised Few-Shot Segmentation

Abstract

Few-Shot Segmentation (FSS) aims to segment novel classes using only a few annotated images. Despite considerable progress under pixel-wise support annotation, current FSS methods still face three issues: the inflexibility of backbone upgrade without re-training, the inability to uniformly handle various types of annotations (e.g., scribble, bounding box, mask, and text), and the difficulty in accommodating different annotation quantity. To address these issues simultaneously, we propose DiffUp, a novel framework that conceptualizes the FSS task as a conditional generative problem using a diffusion process. For the first issue, we introduce a backbone-agnostic feature transformation module that converts different segmentation cues into unified coarse priors, facilitating seamless backbone upgrade without re-training. For the second issue, due to the varying granularity of transformed priors from diverse annotation types (scribble, bounding box, mask, and text), we conceptualize these multi-granular transformed priors as analogous to noisy intermediates at different steps of a diffusion model. This is implemented via a self-conditioned modulation block coupled with a dual-level quality modulation branch. For the third issue, we incorporate an uncertainty-aware information fusion module to harmonize the variability across zero-shot, one-shot, and many-shot scenarios. Evaluated through rigorous benchmarks, DiffUp significantly outperforms existing FSS models in terms of flexibility and accuracy.