WISH: Weakly Supervised Instance Segmentation using Heterogeneous Labels

Abstract

Instance segmentation traditionally relies on dense pixel-level annotations, making it costly and labor-intensive. To alleviate this burden, weakly supervised instance segmentation utilizes cost-effective weak labels, such as image-level tags, points, and bounding boxes. However, existing approaches typically focus on a single type of weak label, overlooking the cost-efficiency potential of combining multiple types. In this paper, we introduce WISH, a novel heterogeneous framework for weakly supervised instance segmentation that integrates diverse weak label types within a single model. WISH unifies heterogeneous labels by leveraging SAM’s prompt latent space through a multi-stage matching strategy, effectively compensating for the lack of spatial information in class tags. Extensive experiments on Pascal VOC and COCO demonstrate that our framework not only surpasses existing homogeneous weak supervision methods but also achieves superior results in heterogeneous settings with equivalent annotation costs.