# Target-aware Dual Adversarial Learning and a Multi-scenario Multi-Modality Benchmark to Fuse Infrared and Visible for Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.16220 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16220/

## Key facts

- Cited by 317 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Dual Attention Network for Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02983/) (2018)
- [SiamRPN++: Evolution of Siamese Visual Tracking with Very Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11703/) (2018)
- [Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05609/) (2020)
- [Learning a Neural Solver for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07515/) (2019)
- [DenseFuse: A Fusion Approach to Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08361/) (2018)
- [Investigating Bi-Level Optimization for Learning and Vision from a Unified Perspective: A Survey and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11517/) (2021)
- [RFN-Nest: An end-to-end residual fusion network for infrared and visible images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04286/) (2021)
- [Convolutional Networks with Dense Connectivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02394/) (2020)
- [DIDFuse: Deep Image Decomposition for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09210/) (2020)
- [Spatial Fusion GAN for Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05840/) (2018)
- [Dual Discriminator Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.03831/) (2017)
- [VIFB: A Visible and Infrared Image Fusion Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03322/) (2020)
- [Learning Deep Context-Sensitive Decomposition for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05147/) (2021)
- [Bayesian Fusion for Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.05839/) (2020)
- [Task-Oriented Convex Bilevel Optimization with Latent Feasibility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03083/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 317)

- [CDDFuse: Correlation-Driven Dual-Branch Feature Decomposition for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14461/) (2022)
- [DDFM: Denoising Diffusion Model for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06840/) (2023)
- [Multi-interactive Feature Learning and a Full-time Multi-modality Benchmark for Image Fusion and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02097/) (2023)
- [Equivariant Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11443/) (2023)
- [Text-IF: Leveraging Semantic Text Guidance for Degradation-Aware and Interactive Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16387/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised Misaligned Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Cross-Modality Image Generation and Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11876/) (2022)
- [Sigma: Siamese Mamba Network for Multi-Modal Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04256/) (2024)
- [Fusion-Mamba for Cross-modality Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09146/) (2024)
- [CoCoNet: Coupled Contrastive Learning Network with Multi-level Feature Ensemble for Multi-modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10960/) (2022)
- [Task-Customized Mixture of Adapters for General Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12494/) (2024)
- [Dif-Fusion: Towards High Color Fidelity in Infrared and Visible Image Fusion with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08072/) (2023)
- [Strategic Preys Make Acute Predators: Enhancing Camouflaged Object Detectors by Generating Camouflaged Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03166/) (2023)
- [Multi-modal Gated Mixture of Local-to-Global Experts for Dynamic Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01392/) (2023)
- [A Task-guided, Implicitly-searched and Meta-initialized Deep Model for Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15862/) (2023)
- [Infrared and Visible Image Fusion: From Data Compatibility to Task Adaption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10761/) (2025)
- [Explicit Attention-Enhanced Fusion for RGB-Thermal Perception Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15710/) (2023)
- [BenchLMM: Benchmarking Cross-style Visual Capability of Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02896/) (2023)
- [MatchAnything: Universal Cross-Modality Image Matching with Large-Scale Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07556/) (2025)
- [Image Fusion via Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02235/) (2024)
- [CrossFuse: A Novel Cross Attention Mechanism based Infrared and Visible Image Fusion Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10581/) (2024)
- [An Interactively Reinforced Paradigm for Joint Infrared-Visible Image Fusion and Saliency Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09999/) (2023)
- [HQG-Net: Unpaired Medical Image Enhancement with High-Quality Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07829/) (2023)
- [MambaDFuse: A Mamba-based Dual-phase Model for Multi-modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08406/) (2024)
- [Every SAM Drop Counts: Embracing Semantic Priors for Multi-Modality Image Fusion and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01210/) (2025)
- [DCEvo: Discriminative Cross-Dimensional Evolutionary Learning for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17673/) (2025)
- [One Model for ALL: Low-Level Task Interaction Is a Key to Task-Agnostic Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19854/) (2025)
- [Text-DiFuse: An Interactive Multi-Modal Image Fusion Framework based on Text-modulated Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23905/) (2024)
- [Learning a Graph Neural Network with Cross Modality Interaction for Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03256/) (2023)
- [DAMSDet: Dynamic Adaptive Multispectral Detection Transformer with Competitive Query Selection and Adaptive Feature Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00326/) (2024)
- [Bi-level Dynamic Learning for Jointly Multi-modality Image Fusion and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06720/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This study addresses the issue of fusing infrared and visible images that appear differently for object detection. Aiming at generating an image of high visual quality, previous approaches discover commons underlying the two modalities and fuse upon the common space either by iterative optimization or deep networks. These approaches neglect that modality differences implying the complementary information are extremely important for both fusion and subsequent detection task. This paper proposes a bilevel optimization formulation for the joint problem of fusion and detection, and then unrolls to a target-aware Dual Adversarial Learning (TarDAL) network for fusion and a commonly used detection network. The fusion network with one generator and dual discriminators seeks commons while learning from differences, which preserves structural information of targets from the infrared and textural details from the visible. Furthermore, we build a synchronized imaging system with calibrated infrared and optical sensors, and collect currently the most comprehensive benchmark covering a wide range of scenarios. Extensive experiments on several public datasets and our benchmark demonstrate that our method outputs not only visually appealing fusion but also higher detection mAP than the state-of-the-art approaches.