Advance Sustainable Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET)
Vol. 8 No. 2 (2026): February-April

Comparative Evaluation of Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning Strategies for Continual Image Classification

Nancy Agarwal (Galgotias University)
Alok Singh Chauhan (Galgotias University)
Patrick Bours (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)



Article Info

Publish Date
18 Mar 2026

Abstract

Catastrophic forgetting remains a major challenge in continual transfer learning, where performance on earlier tasks degrades after sequential adaptation. While full fine-tuning updates all parameters and achieves strong performance on new tasks, it is computationally expensive and prone to forgetting. This study compares parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods—adapters, additive learning, side-tuning, LoRA, and zero-initialized layers—against full fine-tuning on CIFAR-100 using a two-stage protocol: task-A (classes 0–49) followed by task-B (classes 50–99), evaluated on ResNet-18 and ResNet-50. Results are reported as mean ± standard deviation over three runs (n = 3), with retention measured using a Swapback-based recall method that distinguishes true forgetting (Δ). Across both architectures, all PEFT methods maintain task-A knowledge (Δ = 0.00), while full fine-tuning exhibits forgetting (Δ = 0.31 on ResNet-18; Δ = 0.20 on ResNet-50). PEFT methods achieve competitive task-B performance while updating only 0.22–4.49% of parameters. Notably, LoRA on ResNet-50 achieves the highest task-B accuracy (0.82) with only 0.93% parameter updates and no forgetting, slightly outperforming full fine-tuning (0.81). These findings highlight PEFT as an efficient and stable alternative for scalable continual transfer learning.

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Journal Info

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Publisher

Subject

Chemistry Computer Science & IT Control & Systems Engineering Electrical & Electronics Engineering Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

Description

Advance Sustainable Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET) is a peer-reviewed open-access international scientific journal dedicated to the latest advancements in sciences, applied sciences and engineering, as well as relating sustainable technology. This journal aims to provide a platform for ...