Interpretable Human-Label-Free Deep Learning for Real-Bogus Classification with Uncertainty Quantification

arXiv:2607.053933.4
Predicted impact top 82% in IM · last 90 daysOriginality Incremental advance
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This work addresses the need for scalable, human-label-free Real-Bogus classification in time-domain surveys, offering a practical solution for forthcoming surveys.

The authors developed a Real-Bogus classification framework that trains without human-labeled data using injected transients and contaminated survey data, achieving strong performance and calibrated uncertainty quantification via a hybrid strategy. The method remains stable under severe class contamination and recovers transient light-curve classes with high fidelity.

Time-domain surveys generate many transient candidates, making Real-Bogus classification a critical step in automated discovery pipelines. Reliable labels are costly, while community labels can be noisy and survey-dependent. We aim to develop a Real-Bogus classification framework that can be trained without human-labeled data using injected transients and bogus-dominated survey data, remains robust under strong class contamination, and provides calibrated uncertainty quantification. We combine simulated transient injections with a contaminated survey class and train a dual-network model using asymmetric co-teaching for classes with different label-noise levels. We evaluate performance on a benchmark subset and analyze the learned representation with latent-space visualization tools. For uncertainty quantification (UQ), we compare MC dropout and deep ensembles and propose a low-cost hybrid strategy that exploits the dual-network setting to improve calibration. We extend the evaluation to the light-curve domain to assess recovery of light-curve classes. The method achieves strong Real-Bogus performance on the labeled subset and remains stable under severe class contamination. It recovers transient light-curve classes with high fidelity, while single-source identification is limited by ambiguity in light-curve-derived labels. Our hybrid UQ approach achieves competitive calibration relative to more expensive ensemble baselines. Latent-space analyses indicate that uncertainty aligns with the decision boundary and reveal subclasses within the bogus population. Our results show that injection-driven, weakly supervised training can enable scalable and consistent Real-Bogus classification without human-labeled training data while providing calibrated uncertainties. The method is suited for transfer to forthcoming surveys by re-running the injection-based training pipeline.

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