{"ID":2831236,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08697","arxiv_id":"2512.08697","title":"What really matters for person re-identification? A Mixture-of-Experts Framework for Semantic Attribute Importance","abstract":"State-of-the-art person re-identification methods achieve impressive accuracy but remain largely opaque, leaving open the question: which high-level semantic attributes do these models actually rely on? We propose MoSAIC-ReID, a Mixture-of-Experts framework that systematically quantifies the importance of pedestrian attributes for re-identification. Our approach uses LoRA-based experts, each linked to a single attribute, and an oracle router that enables controlled attribution analysis. While MoSAIC-ReID achieves competitive performance on Market-1501 and DukeMTMC under the assumption that attribute annotations are available at test time, its primary value lies in providing a large-scale, quantitative study of attribute importance across intrinsic and extrinsic cues. Using generalized linear models, statistical tests, and feature-importance analyses, we reveal which attributes, such as clothing colors and intrinsic characteristics, contribute most strongly, while infrequent cues (e.g. accessories) have limited effect. This work offers a principled framework for interpretable ReID and highlights the requirements for integrating explicit semantic knowledge in practice. Code is available at https://github.com/psaltaath/MoSAIC-ReID","short_abstract":"State-of-the-art person re-identification methods achieve impressive accuracy but remain largely opaque, leaving open the question: which high-level semantic attributes do these models actually rely on? We propose MoSAIC-ReID, a Mixture-of-Experts framework that systematically quantifies the importance of pedestrian at...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08697","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08697v1","authors":"[\"Athena Psalta\",\"Vasileios Tsironis\",\"Konstantinos Karantzalos\"]","published":"2025-12-09T15:14:28Z","proceeding":"cs.CV","tasks":"[\"cs.CV\"]","methods":"[\"LoRA\"]","has_code":false,"code_links":[{"ID":606109,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_id":2831236,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08697","paper_title":"What really matters for person re-identification? A Mixture-of-Experts Framework for Semantic Attribute Importance","repo_url":"https://github.com/psaltaath/MoSAIC-ReID","is_official":false,"mentioned_in_paper":false,"mentioned_in_github":true,"github_stars":0}]}