Neural Collapse Priors Driven Trust Semi-Supervised Multi-View Classification

Abstract

In semi‑supervised multi‑view classification (SMVC), scarce labels and noisy unlabeled data impair feature aggregation and compromise prediction reliability, while existing methods lack principled guidance and interpretability. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel unified SMVC framework, Neural Collapse Priors Driven Trust Semi-Supervised Multi-View Classification (NCPD-TSMVC), building upon neural collapse–derived prototype priors and evidential opinion fusion. Concretely, we rigorously prove under neural collapse theory that normalized classifier weights from the labeled‑data pre‑training stage coincide with class centroids in feature space, conferring maximal inter‑class separation and optimal within‑class compactness. These prototype priors permeate the entire learning pipeline, calibrating the representation learning of unlabeled samples to obtain highly discriminative embeddings. Simultaneously, our evidential learning module quantifies epistemic uncertainty and fuses view‑level opinions at the evidence level, yielding robust and transparent decision making. Extensive evaluations across diverse benchmarks demonstrate that NCPD‑TSMVC surpasses state‑of‑the‑art SMVC approaches in performance, robustness and interpretability.