mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

ALIKE: Accurate and Lightweight Keypoint Detection and Descriptor Extraction

arXiv 2112.02906 ↗First posted 6 Dec 2021cs.CVcited by 77

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Abstract (arXiv)

Existing methods detect the keypoints in a non-differentiable way, therefore they can not directly optimize the position of keypoints through back-propagation. To address this issue, we present a partially differentiable keypoint detection module, which outputs accurate sub-pixel keypoints. The reprojection loss is then proposed to directly optimize these sub-pixel keypoints, and the dispersity peak loss is presented for accurate keypoints regularization. We also extract the descriptors in a sub-pixel way, and they are trained with the stable neural reprojection error loss. Moreover, a lightweight network is designed for keypoint detection and descriptor extraction, which can run at 95 frames per second for 640x480 images on a commercial GPU. On homography estimation, camera pose estimation, and visual (re-)localization tasks, the proposed method achieves equivalent performance with the state-of-the-art approaches, while greatly reduces the inference time.

Key facts. Cited by 77 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Dec 2021.

Builds on

31 of 52 references.

References · 31

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 37,240
  3. 2017SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Descriptioncited by 1,320
  4. 2016ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Camerascited by 806
  5. 2018MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photoscited by 737
  6. 2019D2-Net: A Trainable CNN for Joint Detection and Description of Local Featurescited by 326
  7. 2020DISK: Learning local features with policy gradientcited by 312
  8. 2016LIFT: Learned Invariant Feature Transformcited by 306
  9. 2017HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptorscited by 264
  10. 2017Integral Human Pose Regressioncited by 256
  11. 2020Image Matching across Wide Baselines: From Paper to Practicecited by 225
  12. 2017Working hard to know your neighbor's margins: Local descriptor learning losscited by 212
19 more
  1. 2019R2D2: Repeatable and Reliable Detector and Descriptorcited by 207
  2. 2018LF-Net: Learning Local Features from Imagescited by 151
  3. 2019SOSNet: Second Order Similarity Regularization for Local Descriptor Learningcited by 131
  4. 2020ASLFeat: Learning Local Features of Accurate Shape and Localizationcited by 130
  5. 2019Key.Net: Keypoint Detection by Handcrafted and Learned CNN Filterscited by 118
  6. 2020Learning Feature Descriptors using Camera Pose Supervisioncited by 104
  7. 2020VPR-Bench: An Open-Source Visual Place Recognition Evaluation Framework with Quantifiable Viewpoint and Appearance Changecited by 101
  8. 2014TILDE: A Temporally Invariant Learned DEtectorcited by 55
  9. 2018Local Descriptors Optimized for Average Precisioncited by 43
  10. 2019Reinforced Feature Points: Optimizing Feature Detection and Description for a High-Level Taskcited by 39
  11. 2016Quad-networks: unsupervised learning to rank for interest point detectioncited by 36
  12. 2020D2D: Keypoint Extraction with Describe to Detect Approachcited by 34
  13. 2020S2DNet: Learning Accurate Correspondences for Sparse-to-Dense Feature Matchingcited by 23
  14. 2019Sparse-to-Dense Hypercolumn Matching for Long-Term Visual Localizationcited by 20
  15. 2020UR2KiD: Unifying Retrieval, Keypoint Detection, and Keypoint Description without Local Correspondence Supervisioncited by 17
  16. 2021Neural Reprojection Error: Merging Feature Learning and Camera Pose Estimationcited by 17
  17. 2020HDD-Net: Hybrid Detector Descriptor with Mutual Interactive Learningcited by 13
  18. 2020SEKD: Self-Evolving Keypoint Detection and Descriptioncited by 11
  19. 2018Dual-mode Dynamic Window Approach to Robot Navigation with Convergence Guaranteescited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 1; 2022: 5; 2023: 10; 2024: 19; 2025: 17; 2026: 25.

77 papers.

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  1. 2023ALIKED: A Lighter Keypoint and Descriptor Extraction Network via Deformable Transformationcited by 121
  2. 2024XFeat: Accelerated Features for Lightweight Image Matchingcited by 113
  3. 2023DeDoDe: Detect, Don't Describe -- Describe, Don't Detect for Local Feature Matchingcited by 63
  4. 2024DeDoDe v2: Analyzing and Improving the DeDoDe Keypoint Detectorcited by 39
  5. 2024Local Feature Matching Using Deep Learning: A Surveycited by 26
  6. 2024MESA: Matching Everything by Segmenting Anythingcited by 16
  7. 2023Segment Anything Model is a Good Teacher for Local Feature Learningcited by 15
  8. 2024EarthMatch: Iterative Coregistration for Fine-grained Localization of Astronaut Photographycited by 13
  9. 2024Learning to Make Keypoints Sub-Pixel Accuratecited by 13
  10. 2025DaD: Distilled Reinforcement Learning for Diverse Keypoint Detectioncited by 13
  11. 2025RDD: Robust Feature Detector and Descriptor using Deformable Transformercited by 13
  12. 2025LiftFeat: 3D Geometry-Aware Local Feature Matchingcited by 12
38 more
  1. 2026LoMa: Local Feature Matching Revisitedcited by 11
  2. 2022FeatureBooster: Boosting Feature Descriptors with a Lightweight Neural Networkcited by 10
  3. 2023Searching from Area to Point: A Hierarchical Framework for Semantic-Geometric Combined Feature Matchingcited by 9
  4. 2025A Guide to Structureless Visual Localizationcited by 9
  5. 20243MOS: Multi-sources, Multi-resolutions, and Multi-scenes dataset for Optical-SAR image matchingcited by 8
  6. 2022Multi-modal Retinal Image Registration Using a Keypoint-Based Vessel Structure Aligning Networkcited by 7
  7. 2023OAMatcher: An Overlapping Areas-based Network for Accurate Local Feature Matchingcited by 7
  8. 2025EDM: Efficient Deep Feature Matchingcited by 7
  9. 2025Deep Learning Reforms Image Matching: A Survey and Outlookcited by 7
  10. 2024Affine steerers for structured keypoint descriptioncited by 6
  11. 2025MIFNet: Learning Modality-Invariant Features for Generalizable Multimodal Image Matchingcited by 6
  12. 2024SRPose: Two-view Relative Pose Estimation with Sparse Keypointscited by 5
  13. 2024Leveraging Semantic Cues from Foundation Vision Models for Enhanced Local Feature Correspondencecited by 5
  14. 2024Image Matching Filtering and Refinement by Planes and Beyondcited by 5
  15. 2023Breaking of brightness consistency in optical flow with a lightweight CNN networkcited by 4
  16. 2024Mismatched: Evaluating the Limits of Image Matching Approaches and Benchmarkscited by 4
  17. 2025Keypoint Detection and Description for Raw Bayer Imagescited by 4
  18. 2024MESA: Effective Matching Redundancy Reduction by Semantic Area Segmentationcited by 3
  19. 2026Second-order Gaussian directional derivative representations for image high-resolution corner detectioncited by 3
  20. 2026RaCo: Ranking and Covariance for Practical Learned Keypointscited by 3
  21. 2022Descriptor Distillation: a Teacher-Student-Regularized Framework for Learning Local Descriptorscited by 2
  22. 2023FMRT: Learning Accurate Feature Matching with Reconciliatory Transformercited by 2
  23. 2024Scale-Free Image Keypoints Using Differentiable Persistent Homologycited by 2
  24. 2025Cutting-edge 3D reconstruction solutions for underwater coral reef images: A review and comparisoncited by 2
  25. 2025Knowledge Distillation for Underwater Feature Extraction and Matching via GAN-synthesized Imagescited by 2
  26. 2025LightGlueStick: a Fast and Robust Glue for Joint Point-Line Matchingcited by 2
  27. 2026A Streamlined Attention-Based Network for Descriptor Extractioncited by 2
  28. 2021Sparse LiDAR Assisted Self-supervised Stereo Disparity Estimationcited by 1
  29. 2023Illumination-insensitive Binary Descriptor for Visual Measurement Based on Local Inter-patch Invariancecited by 1
  30. 2023Improving the matching of deformable objects by learning to detect keypointscited by 1
  31. 2024Neural Augmentation Based Panoramic High Dynamic Range Stitchingcited by 1
  32. 2024FaVoR: Features via Voxel Rendering for Camera Relocalizationcited by 1
  33. 2024BiDense: Binarization for Dense Predictioncited by 1
  34. 2025EdgePoint2: Compact Descriptors for Superior Efficiency and Accuracycited by 1
  35. 2025CasP: Improving Semi-Dense Feature Matching Pipeline Leveraging Cascaded Correspondence Priors for Guidancecited by 1
  36. 2026ViBA: Implicit Bundle Adjustment with Geometric and Temporal Consistency for Robust Visual Matchingcited by 1
  37. 2026GESS: Multi-cue Guided Local Feature Learning via Geometric and Semantic Synergycited by 1
  38. 2026Argus: Metric Panoramic 3D Reconstruction for Indoor Scenescited by 1

50 most cited of 77 All 77 (JSON)