# Evaluating Contrastive Models for Instance-based Image Retrieval

Source: [Evaluating Contrastive Models for Instance-based Image Retrieval](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa69d11e209131cea245d0>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T23:09:38.543Z

Authors: Tarun Krishna, Kevin McGuinness, Noel O'Connor

Published: 2021-04-30T12:05:23.000Z

## Abstract

In this work, we evaluate contrastive models for the task of image retrieval. We hypothesise that models that are learned to encode semantic similarity among instances via discriminative learning should perform well on the task of image retrieval, where relevancy is defined in terms of instances of the same object. Through our extensive evaluation, we find that representations from models trained using contrastive methods perform on-par with (and outperforms) a pre-trained supervised baseline trained on the ImageNet labels in retrieval tasks under various configurations. This is remarkable given that the contrastive models require no explicit supervision. Thus, we conclude that these models can be used to bootstrap base models to build more robust image retrieval engines.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.14939>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.14939.pdf>)