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Test-Time Self-Adaptive Conditioning for Stable Audio-Driven Talking-Head Generation

arXiv:2605.25488v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Audio-driven talking-head generation has achieved remarkable progress with recent models such as AniTalker, FLOAT, and Sonic. Despite their success, most existing approaches rely on a single static reference image to condition the entire video generation process at inference stage. This static conditioning paradigm often creates a mismatch between fixed identity features and dynamically evolving facial motion, leading to identity drift, temporal inconsistency, and degraded perceptual quality. We introduce Test-Time Self-Adaptive Conditioning (TT-SAC), a parameter-free inference framework that enables pretrained talking-head generators to adapt their conditioning representations during inference without retraining, gradient updates, or additional supervision. Instead of treating the reference portrait as immutable, TT-SAC composes the generator with its encoder in a feedback loop: the generator's own outputs are re-encoded to construct a refined conditioning representation that better aligns with the temporal dynamics of the synthesized sequence. A single adaptation step approximates a self-consistent equilibrium of the generative process, stabilizing identity and motion across time. We further provide theoretical analysis showing that test-time conditioning adaptation reduces feature variance and improves generative stability under mild Lipschitz assumptions, while exhibiting a principled bias-variance tradeoff that governs the optimal strength of adaptation. Extensive experiments on state-of-the-art talking-head generators and benchmark datasets demonstrate consistent improvements in lip-sync accuracy, temporal coherence, identity preservation, and perceptual fidelity. TT-SAC offers a model-agnostic and training-free strategy for enhancing generative video models, establishing test-time conditioning adaptation as an effective mechanism for stabilizing audio-driven portrait animation.

Dynamic Targetable Extracellular Vesicle Surface Proteins Monitor Depth of Response to CAR T Therapy

Res Sq [Preprint]. 2026 Mar 18:rs.3.rs-8913641. doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8913641/v1.

ABSTRACT

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) represent a promising liquid biopsy platform in multiple myeloma (MM). We developed an MM EV Surface Protein Assay to quantify and dynamically monitor four MM EV subpopulations defined by targetable MM surface proteins (BCMA, CD38, GPRC5D, and CD319) across 336 serial blood samples from 45 relapsed/refractory MM (RRMM) patients treated with anti-BCMA chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. All four MM EV subpopulations significantly decreased in 43 patients with initial response, while BCMA+, GPRC5D+, and CD319+ MM EVs increased in 19 patients with progression, and antigen escape was detected by BCMA+ MM EVs. MM EV subpopulations differentiated minimal residual disease (MRD) status and complemented MRD for detecting early relapse before clinical progression. Notably, CD319+ MM EVs were early predictors of progression-free and overall survival in MRD-negative patients. This assay enables noninvasive monitoring of deep response, progression, and antigen escape, and stratifies survival in MRD-negative patients with RRMM.

PMID:41890853 | PMC:PMC13015583 | DOI:10.21203/rs.3.rs-8913641/v1

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