# BALF: Simple and Efficient Blur Aware Local Feature Detector

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.14731 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14731/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 46 of its 88 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Nov 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 46)

- [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)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [MLP-Mixer: An all-MLP Architecture for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01601/) (2021)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02808/) (2021)
- [Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02177/) (2016)
- [Pay Attention to MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.08050/) (2021)
- [DeblurGAN: Blind Motion Deblurring Using Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07064/) (2017)
- [DeblurGAN-v2: Deblurring (Orders-of-Magnitude) Faster and Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03826/) (2019)
- [ResMLP: Feedforward networks for image classification with data-efficient training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03404/) (2021)
- [Scale-recurrent Network for Deep Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01770/) (2018)
- [D2-Net: A Trainable CNN for Joint Detection and Description of Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03561/) (2019)
- [LIFT: Learned Invariant Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09114/) (2016)
- [MAXIM: Multi-Axis MLP for Image Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02973/) (2022)
- [HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05939/) (2017)
- [Working hard to know your neighbor's margins: Local descriptor learning loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10872/) (2017)
- [R2D2: Repeatable and Reliable Detector and Descriptor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06195/) (2019)
- [Deblurring by Realistic Blurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01860/) (2020)
- [LF-Net: Learning Local Features from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09662/) (2018)
- [Learning a Convolutional Neural Network for Non-uniform Motion Blur Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.00593/) (2015)
- [Key.Net: Keypoint Detection by Handcrafted and Learned CNN Filters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00889/) (2019)
- [Vision Permutator: A Permutable MLP-Like Architecture for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12368/) (2021)
- [AS-MLP: An Axial Shifted MLP Architecture for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08391/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [CogVLA: Cognition-Aligned Vision-Language-Action Model via Instruction-Driven Routing & Sparsification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21046/) (2025)
- [ReTrack: Evidence-Driven Dual-Stream Directional Anchor Calibration Network for Composed Video Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17898/) (2026)
- [HUD: Hierarchical Uncertainty-Aware Disambiguation Network for Composed Video Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02792/) (2025)
- [SpaceDrive: Infusing Spatial Awareness into VLM-based Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10719/) (2025)
- [INTENT: Invariance and Discrimination-aware Noise Mitigation for Robust Composed Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18051/) (2026)
- [HABIT: Chrono-Synergia Robust Progressive Learning Framework for Composed Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18037/) (2026)
- [ConeSep: Cone-based Robust Noise-Unlearning Compositional Network for Composed Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20358/) (2026)
- [Audio-Enhanced Vision-Language Modeling with Latent Space Broadening for High Quality Data Expansion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17551/) (2025)
- [Task-Specific Efficiency Analysis: When Small Language Models Outperform Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21389/) (2026)
- [Hy-Facial: Hybrid Feature Extraction by Dimensionality Reduction Methods for Enhanced Facial Expression Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26614/) (2025)
- [EEO-TFV: Escape-Explore Optimizer for Web-Scale Time-Series Forecasting and Vision Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02551/) (2026)
- [Adaptive Event Stream Slicing for Open-Vocabulary Event-Based Object Detection via Vision-Language Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00681/) (2025)
- [Deep Learning Reforms Image Matching: A Survey and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04619/) (2025)
- [FocusTrack: One-Stage Focus-and-Suppress Framework for 3D Point Cloud Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24133/) (2026)
- [CATCH: A Modular Cross-domain Adaptive Template with Hook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26582/) (2025)
- [The Efficiency Frontier: A Unified Framework for Cost-Performance Optimization in LLM Context Management](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23071/) (2026)
- [Neural-Driven Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05397/) (2025)
- [Perception Graph for Cognitive Attack Reasoning in Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.05324/) (2025)
- [Beyond Frame-wise Tracking: A Trajectory-based Paradigm for Efficient Point Cloud Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11453/) (2025)
- [HyperEdit: Unlocking Instruction-based Text Editing in LLMs via Hypernetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12544/) (2025)
- [InfoCom: Kilobyte-Scale Communication-Efficient Collaborative Perception with Information Bottleneck](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10305/) (2025)
- [Second-order Gaussian directional derivative representations for image high-resolution corner detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08182/) (2026)
- [Adaptive Debiasing Tsallis Entropy for Test-Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11743/) (2026)
- [TDEC: Deep Embedded Image Clustering with Transformer and Distribution Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26746/) (2026)
- [Coarse-to-Fine Personalized LLM Impressions for Streamlined Radiology Reports](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15845/) (2025)
- [Modality-Aware Infrared and Visible Image Fusion with Target-Aware Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11476/) (2025)
- [DiagnoLLM: A Hybrid Bayesian Neural Language Framework for Interpretable Disease Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05810/) (2025)
- [DP-FedAdamW: An Efficient Optimizer for Differentially Private Federated Large Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19945/) (2026)
- [BlackMirror: Black-Box Backdoor Detection for Text-to-Image Models via Instruction-Response Deviation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05921/) (2026)
- [CNMBI: Determining the Number of Clusters Using Center Pairwise Matching and Boundary Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26744/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Local feature detection is a key ingredient of many image processing and computer vision applications, such as visual odometry and localization. Most existing algorithms focus on feature detection from a sharp image. They would thus have degraded performance once the image is blurred, which could happen easily under low-lighting conditions. To address this issue, we propose a simple yet both efficient and effective keypoint detection method that is able to accurately localize the salient keypoints in a blurred image. Our method takes advantages of a novel multi-layer perceptron (MLP) based architecture that significantly improve the detection repeatability for a blurred image. The network is also light-weight and able to run in real-time, which enables its deployment for time-constrained applications. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our detector is able to improve the detection repeatability with blurred images, while keeping comparable performance as existing state-of-the-art detectors for sharp images.