dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaEnhancing Image Quality Assessment Ability of LMMs via Retrieval-Augmented Generation
| Authors | Kang Fu, Huiyu Duan, Zicheng Zhang, Yucheng Zhu, Jun Zhao, Xiongkuo Min, Jia Wang, Guangtao Zhai |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | 2601.08311vv1 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08311 |
| License | http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ |
Abstract
Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) have recently shown remarkable promise in low-level visual perception tasks, particularly in Image Quality Assessment (IQA), demonstrating strong zero-shot capability. However, achieving state-of-the-art performance often requires computationally expensive fine-tuning methods, which aim to align the distribution of quality-related token in output with image quality levels. Inspired by recent training-free works for LMM, we introduce IQARAG, a novel, training-free framework that enhances LMMs' IQA ability. IQARAG leverages Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to retrieve some semantically similar but quality-variant reference images with corresponding Mean Opinion Scores (MOSs) for input image. These retrieved images and input image are integrated into a specific prompt. Retrieved images provide the LMM with a visual perception anchor for IQA task. IQARAG contains three key phases: Retrieval Feature Extraction, Image Retrieval, and Integration & Quality Score Generation. Extensive experiments across multiple diverse IQA datasets, including KADID, KonIQ, LIVE Challenge, and SPAQ, demonstrate that the proposed IQARAG effectively boosts the IQA performance of LMMs, offering a resource-efficient alternative to fine-tuning for quality assessment.
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"date_created": "2026-02-17T05:53:16.238000Z",
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"abstract": "Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) have recently shown remarkable promise in low-level visual perception tasks, particularly in Image Quality Assessment (IQA), demonstrating strong zero-shot capability. However, achieving state-of-the-art performance often requires computationally expensive fine-tuning methods, which aim to align the distribution of quality-related token in output with image quality levels. Inspired by recent training-free works for LMM, we introduce IQARAG, a novel, training-free framework that enhances LMMs\u0027 IQA ability. IQARAG leverages Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to retrieve some semantically similar but quality-variant reference images with corresponding Mean Opinion Scores (MOSs) for input image. These retrieved images and input image are integrated into a specific prompt. Retrieved images provide the LMM with a visual perception anchor for IQA task. IQARAG contains three key phases: Retrieval Feature Extraction, Image Retrieval, and Integration \u0026 Quality Score Generation. Extensive experiments across multiple diverse IQA datasets, including KADID, KonIQ, LIVE Challenge, and SPAQ, demonstrate that the proposed IQARAG effectively boosts the IQA performance of LMMs, offering a resource-efficient alternative to fine-tuning for quality assessment.",
"arxiv_id": "2601.08311",
"authors": [
"Kang Fu",
"Huiyu Duan",
"Zicheng Zhang",
"Yucheng Zhu",
"Jun Zhao",
"Xiongkuo Min",
"Jia Wang",
"Guangtao Zhai"
],
"categories": [
"cs.CV",
"cs.AI"
],
"license": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
"title": "Enhancing Image Quality Assessment Ability of LMMs via Retrieval-Augmented Generation",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08311",
"version": "v1"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
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"variant": "snapshot-2026-01-17",
"version": "0.1.0"
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"user_id": 1000002
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