Efficient Face Image Quality Assessment via Self-training and Knowledge Distillation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a computationally efficient face image quality assessment method using self-training and knowledge distillation, achieving high performance with low overhead and winning a major challenge.

Contribution

It proposes a novel two-stage training framework with self-training and knowledge distillation to create a lightweight, high-performing FIQA model suitable for real-world deployment.

Findings

Student model matches teacher performance with low computational cost.

The method outperforms existing FIQA approaches in efficiency and accuracy.

Achieved first place in the ICCV 2025 VQualA FIQA Challenge.

Abstract

Face image quality assessment (FIQA) is essential for various face-related applications. Although FIQA has been extensively studied and achieved significant progress, the computational complexity of FIQA algorithms remains a key concern for ensuring scalability and practical deployment in real-world systems. In this paper, we aim to develop a computationally efficient FIQA method that can be easily deployed in real-world applications. Specifically, our method consists of two stages: training a powerful teacher model and distilling a lightweight student model from it. To build a strong teacher model, we adopt a self-training strategy to improve its capacity. We first train the teacher model using labeled face images, then use it to generate pseudo-labels for a set of unlabeled images. These pseudo-labeled samples are used in two ways: (1) to distill knowledge into the student model, and (2) to combine with the original labeled images to further enhance the teacher model through self-training. The enhanced teacher model is used to further pseudo-label another set of unlabeled images for distilling the student models. The student model is trained using a combination of labeled images, pseudo-labeled images from the original teacher model, and pseudo-labeled images from the enhanced teacher model. Experimental results demonstrate that our student model achieves comparable performance to the teacher model with an extremely low computational overhead. Moreover, our method achieved first place in the ICCV 2025 VQualA FIQA Challenge. The code is available at https://github.com/sunwei925/Efficient-FIQA.git.