# Uncertainty-Aware Likelihood Ratio Estimation for Pixel-Wise Out-of-Distribution Detection

Source: [Uncertainty-Aware Likelihood Ratio Estimation for Pixel-Wise Out-of-Distribution Detection](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa7a4f1e209131cea825d6>)

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

Data updated: 2025-10-26T05:17:11.038Z

Authors: Marc H\\"olle, Walter Kellermann, Vasileios Belagiannis

Published: 2025-08-01T12:39:16.000Z

## Abstract

Semantic segmentation models trained on known object classes often fail in real-world autonomous driving scenarios by confidently misclassifying unknown objects. While pixel-wise out-of-distribution detection can identify unknown objects, existing methods struggle in complex scenes where rare object classes are often confused with truly unknown objects. We introduce an uncertainty-aware likelihood ratio estimation method that addresses these limitations. Our approach uses an evidential classifier within a likelihood ratio test to distinguish between known and unknown pixel features from a semantic segmentation model, while explicitly accounting for uncertainty. Instead of producing point estimates, our method outputs probability distributions that capture uncertainty from both rare training examples and imperfect synthetic outliers. We show that by incorporating uncertainty in this way, outlier exposure can be leveraged more effectively. Evaluated on five standard benchmark datasets, our method achieves the lowest average false positive rate (2.5%) among state-of-the-art while maintaining high average precision (90.91%) and incurring only negligible computational overhead. Code is available at https://github.com/glasbruch/ULRE.

## 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/2508.00587>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.00587.pdf>)
