# Semi-Supervised Few-Shot Adaptation of Vision-Language Models

Source: [Semi-Supervised Few-Shot Adaptation of Vision-Language Models](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/69a7bc812d603e6de3e3d4d0>)

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

Data updated: 2026-03-05T05:00:04.307Z

Authors: Julio Silva-Rodr\\'iguez, Ender Konukoglu

Published: 2026-03-03T13:11:47.000Z

## Abstract

Vision-language models (VLMs) pre-trained on large, heterogeneous data sources are becoming increasingly popular, providing rich multi-modal embeddings that enable efficient transfer to new tasks. A particularly relevant application is few-shot adaptation, where only a handful of annotated examples are available to adapt the model through multi-modal linear probes. In medical imaging, specialized VLMs have shown promising performance in zero- and few-shot image classification, which is valuable for mitigating the high cost of expert annotations. However, challenges remain in extremely low-shot regimes: the inherent class imbalances in medical tasks often lead to underrepresented categories, penalizing overall model performance. To address this limitation, we propose leveraging unlabeled data by introducing an efficient semi-supervised solver that propagates text-informed pseudo-labels during few-shot adaptation. The proposed method enables lower-budget annotation pipelines for adapting VLMs, reducing labeling effort by \>50% in low-shot regimes.

## 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/2603.02959>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.02959.pdf>)
