# PixMamba: Leveraging State Space Models in a Dual-Level Architecture for Underwater Image Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.08444 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08444/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Transformers are SSMs: Generalized Models and Efficient Algorithms Through Structured State Space Duality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21060/) (2024)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [VMamba: Visual State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10166/) (2024)
- [Deep Laplacian Pyramid Networks for Fast and Accurate Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03915/) (2017)
- [An Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark Dataset and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05495/) (2019)
- [LocalMamba: Visual State Space Model with Windowed Selective Scan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09338/) (2024)
- [Underwater Image Enhancement via Medium Transmission-Guided Multi-Color Space Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13015/) (2021)
- [Underwater Single Image Color Restoration Using Haze-Lines and a New Quantitative Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01343/) (2018)
- [Real-world Underwater Enhancement: Challenges, Benchmarks, and Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05320/) (2019)
- [Contrastive Semi-supervised Learning for Underwater Image Restoration via Reliable Bank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09101/) (2023)
- [Underwater Ranker: Learn Which Is Better and How to Be Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06857/) (2022)
- [Uncertainty Inspired Underwater Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09689/) (2022)
- [PUGAN: Physical Model-Guided Underwater Image Enhancement Using GAN with Dual-Discriminators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08918/) (2023)
- [Shallow-UWnet : Compressed Model for Underwater Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02073/) (2021)
- [UIEC^2-Net: CNN-based Underwater Image Enhancement Using Two Color Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07138/) (2021)
- [Five A+ Network: You Only Need 9K Parameters for Underwater Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08824/) (2023)
- [ConvFormer: Combining CNN and Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08564/) (2022)
- [WaterMamba: Visual State Space Model for Underwater Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08419/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [MambaIRv2: Attentive State Space Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15269/) (2024)
- [Mamba in Vision: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03105/) (2024)
- [NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Image Super-Resolution (x4): Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14582/) (2025)
- [Mamba-UIE: Enhancing Underwater Images with Physical Model Constraint](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19248/) (2024)
- [Venturing into Uncharted Waters: The Navigation Compass from Transformer to Mamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16722/) (2024)
- [JDPNet: A Network Based on Joint Degradation Processing for Underwater Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20213/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Underwater Image Enhancement (UIE) is critical for marine research and exploration but hindered by complex color distortions and severe blurring. Recent deep learning-based methods have achieved remarkable results, yet these methods struggle with high computational costs and insufficient global modeling, resulting in locally under- or over- adjusted regions. We present PixMamba, a novel architecture, designed to overcome these challenges by leveraging State Space Models (SSMs) for efficient global dependency modeling. Unlike convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with limited receptive fields and transformer networks with high computational costs, PixMamba efficiently captures global contextual information while maintaining computational efficiency. Our dual-level strategy features the patch-level Efficient Mamba Net (EMNet) for reconstructing enhanced image feature and the pixel-level PixMamba Net (PixNet) to ensure fine-grained feature capturing and global consistency of enhanced image that were previously difficult to obtain. PixMamba achieves state-of-the-art performance across various underwater image datasets and delivers visually superior results. Code is available at: https://github.com/weitunglin/pixmamba.