Everything About Imbalanced Learning

Imbalanced learning papers, codes, and libraries

Class-imbalance is the fact that the classes are not represented equally in a classification problem, which is quite common in practice. For instance, fraud detection, prediction of rare adverse drug reactions and prediction gene families. Failure to account for the class imbalance often causes inaccurate and decreased predictive performance of many classification algorithms. Imbalanced learning aims to tackle the class imbalance problem to learn an unbiased model from imbalanced data.
In this repository:**
  • Frameworks and libraries are grouped by programming language.
  • Research papers are grouped by research field.
Note:
  • There are numerous papers in this field of research, so this list is not intended to be exhaustive.

1. Frameworks and Libraries

1.1 Python

  • imbalanced-ensemble [Github][Documentation][Gallery][Paper]
    • NOTE: written in python, easy to use.
    • imbalanced-ensemble is a Python toolbox for quick implementing and deploying ensemble learning algorithms on class-imbalanced data. It is featured for:
      • Unified, easy-to-use APIs, detailed documentation and examples.
      • Capable for multi-class imbalanced learning out-of-box.
      • Optimized performance with parallelization when possible using joblib.
      • Powerful, customizable, interactive training logging and visualizer.
      • Full compatibility with other popular packages like scikit-learn and imbalanced-learn.
    • Currently (v0.1.4), it includes more than 15 ensemble algorithms based on re-sampling and cost-sensitive learning (e.g., SMOTEBoost/Bagging, RUSBoost/Bagging, AdaCost, EasyEnsemble, BalanceCascade, SelfPacedEnsemble, …).
  • imbalanced-learn [Github][Documentation][Paper]
    • NOTE: written in python, easy to use.
    • imbalanced-learn is a python package offering a number of re-sampling techniques commonly used in datasets showing strong between-class imbalance. It is compatible with scikit-learn and is part of scikit-learn-contrib projects.
    • Currently (v0.8.0), it includes 21 different re-sampling techniques, including over-sampling, under-sampling and hybrid ones (e.g., SMOTE, ADASYN, TomekLinks, NearMiss, OneSideSelection, SMOTETomek, …)
    • This package also provides many utilities, e.g., Batch generator for Keras/TensorFlow, see API reference.
  • smote_variants [Documentation][Github] - A collection of 85 minority over-sampling techniques for imbalanced learning with multi-class oversampling and model selection features (All writen in Python, also support R and Julia).

1.2 R

  • smote_variants [Documentation][Github] - A collection of 85 minority over-sampling techniques for imbalanced learning with multi-class oversampling and model selection features (All writen in Python, also support R and Julia).

1.3 Java

  • KEEL [Github][Paper] - KEEL provides a simple GUI based on data flow to design experiments with different datasets and computational intelligence algorithms (paying special attention to evolutionary algorithms) in order to assess the behavior of the algorithms. This tool includes many widely used imbalanced learning techniques such as (evolutionary) over/under-resampling, cost-sensitive learning, algorithm modification, and ensemble learning methods.
    • NOTE: wide variety of classical classification, regression, preprocessing algorithms included.

1.4 Scalar

1.5 Julia

  • smote_variants [Documentation][Github] - A collection of 85 minority over-sampling techniques for imbalanced learning with multi-class oversampling and model selection features (All writen in Python, also support R and Julia).

2. Research Papers

2.1 Surveys

  • Learning from imbalanced data (IEEE TKDE, 2009, 6000+ citations) [Paper]
    • Highly cited, classic survey paper. It systematically reviewed the popular solutions, evaluation metrics, and challenging problems in future research in this area (as of 2009).
  • Learning from imbalanced data: open challenges and future directions (2016, 900+ citations) [Paper]
    • This paper concentrates on the open issues and challenges in imbalanced learning, i.e., extreme class imbalance, imbalance in online/stream learning, multi-class imbalanced learning, and semi/un-supervised imbalanced learning.
  • Learning from class-imbalanced data: Review of methods and applications (2017, 900+ citations) [Paper]
    • A recent exhaustive survey of imbalanced learning methods and applications, a total of 527 papers were included in this study. It provides several detailed taxonomies of existing methods and also the recent trend of this research area.

2.2 Ensemble Learning

2.2.1 General ensemble

  • Self-paced Ensemble (ICDE 2020, 20+ citations) [Paper][Code][Slides][Zhihu/知乎][PyPI]
    • NOTE: versatile solution with outstanding performance and computational efficiency.
  • MESA: Boost Ensemble Imbalanced Learning with MEta-SAmpler (NeurIPS 2020) [Paper][Code][Video][Zhihu/知乎]
    • NOTE: learning an optimal sampling policy directly from data.
  • Exploratory Undersampling for Class-Imbalance Learning (IEEE Trans. on SMC, 2008, 1300+ citations) [Paper]
    • NOTE: simple but effective solution.
    • EasyEnsemble [Code]
    • BalanceCascade [Code]

2.2.2 Boosting-based

  • AdaBoost (1995, 18700+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Adaptive Boosting with C4.5
  • DataBoost (2004, 570+ citations) [Paper] - Boosting with Data Generation for Imbalanced Data
  • SMOTEBoost (2003, 1100+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Synthetic Minority Over-sampling TEchnique Boosting
  • MSMOTEBoost (2011, 1300+ citations) [Paper] - Modified Synthetic Minority Over-sampling TEchnique Boosting
  • RAMOBoost (2010, 140+ citations) [Paper] [Code] - Ranked Minority Over-sampling in Boosting
  • RUSBoost (2009, 850+ citations) [Paper] [Code] - Random Under-Sampling Boosting
  • AdaBoostNC (2012, 350+ citations) [Paper] - Adaptive Boosting with Negative Correlation Learning
  • EUSBoost (2013, 210+ citations) [Paper] - Evolutionary Under-sampling in Boosting

2.2.3 Bagging-based

  • Bagging (1996, 20000+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Bagging predictor
  • Diversity Analysis on Imbalanced Data Sets by Using Ensemble Models (2009, 400+ citations) [Paper]

2.2.4 Cost-sensitive ensemble

  • AdaCost (ICML 1999, 800+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Misclassification Cost-sensitive boosting
  • AdaUBoost (NIPS 1999, 100+ citations) [Paper][Code] - AdaBoost with Unequal loss functions
  • AsymBoost (NIPS 2001, 700+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Asymmetric AdaBoost and detector cascade

2.3 Data resampling

2.3.1 Over-sampling

  • ROS [Code] - Random Over-sampling
  • SMOTE (2002, 9800+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Synthetic Minority Over-sampling TEchnique
  • Borderline-SMOTE (2005, 1400+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Borderline-Synthetic Minority Over-sampling TEchnique
  • ADASYN (2008, 1100+ citations) [Paper][Code] - ADAptive SYNthetic Sampling
  • SPIDER (2008, 150+ citations) [Paper][Code(Java)] - Selective Preprocessing of Imbalanced Data
  • Safe-Level-SMOTE (2009, 370+ citations) [Paper][Code(Java)] - Safe Level Synthetic Minority Over-sampling TEchnique
  • SVM-SMOTE (2009, 120+ citations) [Paper][Code] - SMOTE based on Support Vectors of SVM
  • MDO (2015, 150+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Mahalanobis Distance-based Over-sampling for Multi-Class imbalanced problems.
NOTE: See more over-sampling methods at smote-variants.

2.3.2 Under-sampling

  • RUS [Code] - Random Under-sampling
  • CNN (1968, 2100+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Condensed Nearest Neighbor
  • ENN (1972, 1500+ citations) [Paper] [Code] - Edited Condensed Nearest Neighbor
  • TomekLink (1976, 870+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Tomek’s modification of Condensed Nearest Neighbor
  • NCR (2001, 500+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Neighborhood Cleaning Rule
  • NearMiss-1 & 2 & 3 (2003, 420+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Several kNN approaches to unbalanced data distributions.
  • CNN with TomekLink (2004, 2000+ citations) [Paper][Code(Java)] - Condensed Nearest Neighbor + TomekLink
  • OSS (2007, 2100+ citations) [Paper][Code] - One Side Selection
  • EUS (2009, 290+ citations) [Paper] - Evolutionary Under-sampling
  • IHT (2014, 130+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Instance Hardness Threshold

2.3.3 Hybrid-sampling

  • A Study of the Behavior of Several Methods for Balancing Training Data (2004, 2000+ citations) [Paper]
    • NOTE: extensive experimental evaluation involving 10 different over/under-sampling methods.
    • SMOTE-Tomek [Code]
    • SMOTE-ENN [Code]
  • SMOTE-RSB (2012, 210+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Hybrid Preprocessing using SMOTE and Rough Sets Theory
  • SMOTE-IPF (2015, 180+ citations) [Paper][Code] - SMOTE with Iterative-Partitioning Filter

2.4 Cost-sensitive Learning

  • CSC4.5 (2002, 420+ citations) [Paper][Code(Java)] - An instance-weighting method to induce cost-sensitive trees
  • CSSVM (2008, 710+ citations) [Paper][Code(Java)] - Cost-sensitive SVMs for highly imbalanced classification
  • CSNN (2005, 950+ citations) [Paper][Code(Java)] - Training cost-sensitive neural networks with methods addressing the class imbalance problem.

2.5 Deep Learning

2.5.1 Surveys

  • A systematic study of the class imbalance problem in convolutional neural networks (2018, 330+ citations) [Paper]
  • Survey on deep learning with class imbalance (2019, 50+ citations) [Paper]
    • NOTE: a recent comprehensive survey of the class imbalance problem in deep learning.

2.5.2 Graph Data Mining

  • Semi-Supervised Graph Imbalanced Regression (KDD 2023) [Paper] [Code]
  • TAM: Topology-Aware Margin Loss for Class-Imbalanced Node Classification (ICML 2022) [Paper][Code]
  • GraphSMOTE: Imbalanced Node Classification on Graphs with Graph Neural Networks (WSDM 2021) [Paper][Code]
  • Topology-Imbalance Learning for Semi-Supervised Node Classification (NeurIPS 2021) [Paper][Code]
  • GraphENS: Neighbor-Aware Ego Network Synthesis for Class-Imbalanced Node Classification (ICLR 2022) [Paper][Code]
  • LTE4G: Long-Tail Experts for Graph Neural Networks (CIKM 2022) [Paper][Code]
  • Multi-Class Imbalanced Graph Convolutional Network Learning (IJCAI 2020) [Paper]

2.5.3 Hard example mining

  • Training region-based object detectors with online hard example mining (CVPR 2016, 840+ citations) [Paper][Code] - In the later phase of NN training, only do gradient back-propagation for “hard examples” (i.e., with large loss value)

2.5.4 Loss function engineering

  • Focal loss for dense object detection (ICCV 2017, 2600+ citations) [Paper][Code (detectron2)][Code (unofficial)] - A uniform loss function that focuses training on a sparse set of hard examples to prevents the vast number of easy negatives from overwhelming the detector during training.
    • NOTE: elegant solution, high influence.
  • Training deep neural networks on imbalanced data sets (IJCNN 2016, 110+ citations) [Paper] - Mean (square) false error that can equally capture classification errors from both the majority class and the minority class.
  • Deep imbalanced attribute classification using visual attention aggregation (ECCV 2018, 30+ citation) [Paper][Code]
  • Imbalanced deep learning by minority class incremental rectification (TPAMI 2018, 60+ citations) [Paper] - Class Rectification Loss for minimizing the dominant effect of majority classes by discovering sparsely sampled boundaries of minority classes in an iterative batch-wise learning process.
  • Learning Imbalanced Datasets with Label-Distribution-Aware Margin Loss (NIPS 2019, 10+ citations) [Paper][Code] - A theoretically-principled label-distribution-aware margin (LDAM) loss motivated by minimizing a margin-based generalization bound.
  • Gradient harmonized single-stage detector (AAAI 2019, 40+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Compared to Focal Loss, which only down-weights “easy” negative examples, GHM also down-weights “very hard” examples as they are likely to be outliers.
  • Class-Balanced Loss Based on Effective Number of Samples (CVPR 2019, 70+ citations) [Paper][Code] - a simple and generic class-reweighting mechanism based on Effective Number of Samples.
  • Influence-Balanced Loss for Imbalanced Visual Classification (ICCV 2021) [Paper][Code]
  • AutoBalance: Optimized Loss Functions for Imbalanced Data (NeurIPS 2021) [Paper]
  • Label-Imbalanced and Group-Sensitive Classification under Overparameterization (NeurIPS 2021) [Paper][Code]

2.5.5 Meta-learning

  • Learning to model the tail (NIPS 2017, 70+ citations) [Paper] - Transfer meta-knowledge from the data-rich classes in the head of the distribution to the data-poor classes in the tail.
  • Learning to reweight examples for robust deep learning (ICML 2018, 150+ citations) [Paper][Code] - Implicitly learn a weight function to reweight the samples in gradient updates of DNN.
    • NOTE: representative work to solve the class imbalance problem through meta-learning.
  • Meta-weight-net: Learning an explicit mapping for sample weighting (NIPS 2019) [Paper][Code] - Explicitly learn a weight function (with an MLP as the function approximator) to reweight the samples in gradient updates of DNN.
  • Learning Data Manipulation for Augmentation and Weighting (NIPS 2019) [Paper][Code]
  • Learning to Balance: Bayesian Meta-Learning for Imbalanced and Out-of-distribution Tasks (ICLR 2020) [Paper][Code]
  • MESA: Boost Ensemble Imbalanced Learning with MEta-SAmpler (NeurIPS 2020) [Paper][Code][Video]
    • NOTE: meta-learning-powered ensemble learning

2.5.6 Representation Learning

  • Learning deep representation for imbalanced classification (CVPR 2016, 220+ citations) [Paper]
  • Supervised Class Distribution Learning for GANs-Based Imbalanced Classification (ICDM 2019) [Paper]
  • Decoupling Representation and Classifier for Long-tailed Recognition (ICLR 2020) [Paper][Code]
    • NOTE: interesting findings on representation learning and classifier learning
  • Supercharging Imbalanced Data Learning With Energy-based Contrastive Representation Transfer (NeurIPS 2021) [Paper]
  • Tailoring Self-Supervision for Supervised Learning (ECCV 2022) [Paper][Code]

2.5.7 Posterior Recalibration

  • Posterior Re-calibration for Imbalanced Datasets (NeurIPS 2020) [Paper][Code]
  • Long-tail learning via logit adjustment (ICLR 2021) [Paper][Code]

2.5.8 Semi/Self-supervised Learning

  • Rethinking the Value of Labels for Improving Class-Imbalanced Learning (NeurIPS 2020) [Paper][Code][Video]
    • NOTE: semi-supervised training / self-supervised pre-training helps imbalance learning
  • Distribution Aligning Refinery of Pseudo-label for Imbalanced Semi-supervised Learning (NeurIPS 2020) [Paper][Code]
  • ABC: Auxiliary Balanced Classifier for Class-imbalanced Semi-supervised Learning (NeurIPS 2021) [Paper][Code]
  • Improving Contrastive Learning on Imbalanced Data via Open-World Sampling (NeurIPS 2021) [Paper]
  • DASO: Distribution-Aware Semantics-Oriented Pseudo-label for Imbalanced Semi-Supervised Learning (CVPR 2022) [Paper][Code]

2.5.9 Curriculum Learning

  • Dynamic Curriculum Learning for Imbalanced Data Classification (ICCV 2019) [Paper]

2.5.10 Two-phase Training

  • Brain tumor segmentation with deep neural networks (2017, 1200+ citations) [Paper][Code (unofficial)]
    • Pre-training on balanced dataset, fine-tuning the last output layer before softmax on the original, imbalanced data.

2.5.11 Network Architecture

  • BBN: Bilateral-Branch Network with Cumulative Learning for Long-Tailed Visual Recognition (CVPR 2020) [Paper][Code]
  • Class-Imbalanced Deep Learning via a Class-Balanced Ensemble (TNNLS 2021) [Paper]

2.5.12 Deep Generative Model

  • Deep Generative Model for Robust Imbalance Classification (CVPR 2020) [Paper]

2.5.13 Imbalanced Regression

  • Semi-Supervised Graph Imbalanced Regression (KDD 2023) [Paper] [Code]
  • RankSim: Ranking Similarity Regularization for Deep Imbalanced Regression (ICML 2022) [Paper] [Code]
  • Balanced MSE for Imbalanced Visual Regression (CVPR 2022) [Paper] [Code]
  • Delving into Deep Imbalanced Regression (ICML 2021) [Paper][Code][Video]
  • Density-based weighting for imbalanced regression (Machine Learning [J], 2021) [Paper][Code]

2.5.14 Data Augmentation

  • Minority-Oriented Vicinity Expansion with Attentive Aggregation for Video Long-Tailed Recognition (AAAI 2023) [Paper][Code]

3. Miscellaneous

3.1 Books

  • Foundations of Imbalanced Learning [pdf] Gary M. Weiss Fordham University

3.2 Datasets

  • imbalanced-learn datasets
    • This collection of datasets is from imblearn.datasets.fetch_datasets.
      ID
      Name
      Repository & Target
      Ratio
      #S
      #F
      1
      ecoli
      UCI, target: imU
      8.6:1
      336
      7
      2
      optical_digits
      UCI, target: 8
      9.1:1
      5,620
      64
      3
      satimage
      UCI, target: 4
      9.3:1
      6,435
      36
      4
      pen_digits
      UCI, target: 5
      9.4:1
      10,992
      16
      5
      abalone
      UCI, target: 7
      9.7:1
      4,177
      10
      6
      sick_euthyroid
      UCI, target: sick euthyroid
      9.8:1
      3,163
      42
      7
      spectrometer
      UCI, target: > =44
      11:1
      531
      93
      8
      car_eval_34
      UCI, target: good, v good
      12:1
      1,728
      21
      9
      isolet
      UCI, target: A, B
      12:1
      7,797
      617
      10
      us_crime
      UCI, target: >0.65
      12:1
      1,994
      100
      11
      yeast_ml8
      LIBSVM, target: 8
      13:1
      2,417
      103
      12
      scene
      LIBSVM, target: >one label
      13:1
      2,407
      294
      13
      libras_move
      UCI, target: 1
      14:1
      360
      90
      14
      thyroid_sick
      UCI, target: sick
      15:1
      3,772
      52
      15
      coil_2000
      KDD, CoIL, target: minority
      16:1
      9,822
      85
      16
      arrhythmia
      UCI, target: 06
      17:1
      452
      278
      17
      solar_flare_m0
      UCI, target: M->0
      19:1
      1,389
      32
      18
      oil
      UCI, target: minority
      22:1
      937
      49
      19
      car_eval_4
      UCI, target: vgood
      26:1
      1,728
      21
      20
      wine_quality
      UCI, wine, target: <=4
      26:1
      4,898
      11
      21
      letter_img
      UCI, target: Z
      26:1
      20,000
      16
      22
      yeast_me2
      UCI, target: ME2
      28:1
      1,484
      8
      23
      webpage
      LIBSVM, w7a, target: minority
      33:1
      34,780
      300
      24
      ozone_level
      UCI, ozone, data
      34:1
      2,536
      72
      25
      mammography
      UCI, target: minority
      42:1
      11,183
      6
      26
      protein_homo
      KDD CUP 2004, minority
      111:1
      145,751
      74
      27
      abalone_19
      UCI, target: 19
      130:1
      4,177
      10
  • Imbalanced Databases
    • Link: https://github.com/gykovacs/mldb

3.3 GitHub Repositories

3.3.1 Algorithms & Utilities & Jupyter Notebooks

  • imbalanced-dataset-sampler - A (PyTorch) imbalanced dataset sampler for oversampling low frequent classes and undersampling high frequent ones.
  • class_imbalance - Jupyter Notebook presentation for class imbalance in binary classification.

3.3.2 Paper list

3.3.3 Slides

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!