# LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.00680 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/

## Key facts

- Cited by 984 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [Reformer: The Efficient Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04451/) (2020)
- [Rethinking Attention with Performers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14794/) (2020)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [Efficient Transformers: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06732/) (2020)
- [MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00607/) (2018)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [Axial-DeepLab: Stand-Alone Axial-Attention for Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07853/) (2020)
- [DISK: Learning local features with policy gradient](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13566/) (2020)
- [LIFT: Learned Invariant Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09114/) (2016)
- [HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05939/) (2017)
- [R2D2: Repeatable and Reliable Detector and Descriptor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06195/) (2019)
- [Revisiting Stereo Depth Estimation From a Sequence-to-Sequence Perspective with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02910/) (2020)
- [COTR: Correspondence Transformer for Matching Across Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14167/) (2021)
- [Learning to Find Good Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05971/) (2017)
- [Neighbourhood Consensus Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.10510/) (2018)
- [Learning Two-View Correspondences and Geometry Using Order-Aware Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04964/) (2019)
- [GLU-Net: Global-Local Universal Network for Dense Flow and Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05524/) (2019)
- [ASLFeat: Learning Local Features of Accurate Shape and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10071/) (2020)
- [Learning Accurate Dense Correspondences and When to Trust Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01710/) (2021)
- [Learning Feature Descriptors using Camera Pose Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13324/) (2020)
- [Efficient Neighbourhood Consensus Networks via Submanifold Sparse Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10566/) (2020)
- [Dual-Resolution Correspondence Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08844/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 984)

- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13643/) (2023)
- [One-2-3-45: Any Single Image to 3D Mesh in 45 Seconds without Per-Shape Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16928/) (2023)
- [BLINK: Multimodal Large Language Models Can See but Not Perceive](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12390/) (2024)
- [Continuous 3D Perception Model with Persistent State](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12387/) (2025)
- [TransFusion: Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11496/) (2022)
- [FoundationPose: Unified 6D Pose Estimation and Tracking of Novel Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08344/) (2023)
- [Deep ViT Features as Dense Visual Descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05814/) (2021)
- [GMFlow: Learning Optical Flow via Global Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13680/) (2021)
- [Driving into the Future: Multiview Visual Forecasting and Planning with World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17918/) (2023)
- [RoMa: Robust Dense Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15404/) (2023)
- [3D Reconstruction with Spatial Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16061/) (2024)
- [FlowFormer: A Transformer Architecture for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16194/) (2022)
- [Visual Geometry Grounded Deep Structure From Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04563/) (2023)
- [Motion-I2V: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Generation with Explicit Motion Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15977/) (2024)
- [Geometric Transformer for Fast and Robust Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06688/) (2022)
- [Pixel-Perfect Structure-from-Motion with Featuremetric Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08291/) (2021)
- [Practical Stereo Matching via Cascaded Recurrent Network with Adaptive Correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11483/) (2022)
- [Tracking Everything Everywhere All at Once](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05422/) (2023)
- [Deep Patch Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04726/) (2022)
- [FLARE: Feed-forward Geometry, Appearance and Camera Estimation from Uncalibrated Sparse Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12138/) (2025)
- [DKM: Dense Kernelized Feature Matching for Geometry Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00667/) (2022)
- [Probing the 3D Awareness of Visual Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08636/) (2024)
- [SEA-RAFT: Simple, Efficient, Accurate RAFT for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14793/) (2024)
- [ASpanFormer: Detector-Free Image Matching with Adaptive Span Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14201/) (2022)
- [Panacea: Panoramic and Controllable Video Generation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16813/) (2023)
- [MASt3R-SfM: a Fully-Integrated Solution for Unconstrained Structure-from-Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19152/) (2024)
- [OnePose: One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12257/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a novel method for local image feature matching. Instead of performing image feature detection, description, and matching sequentially, we propose to first establish pixel-wise dense matches at a coarse level and later refine the good matches at a fine level. In contrast to dense methods that use a cost volume to search correspondences, we use self and cross attention layers in Transformer to obtain feature descriptors that are conditioned on both images. The global receptive field provided by Transformer enables our method to produce dense matches in low-texture areas, where feature detectors usually struggle to produce repeatable interest points. The experiments on indoor and outdoor datasets show that LoFTR outperforms state-of-the-art methods by a large margin. LoFTR also ranks first on two public benchmarks of visual localization among the published methods.