# ReMOVE: A Reference-free Metric for Object Erasure

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.00707 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00707/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 22 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [CLIPScore: A Reference-free Evaluation Metric for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08718/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14818/) (2021)
- [Resolution-robust Large Mask Inpainting with Fourier Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07161/) (2021)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [Blended Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02779/) (2022)
- [AnyDoor: Zero-shot Object-level Image Customization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09481/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Model-Based Image Editing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17525/) (2024)
- [From Show to Tell: A Survey on Deep Learning-based Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06912/) (2021)
- [Inst-Inpaint: Instructing to Remove Objects with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03246/) (2023)
- [EditVal: Benchmarking Diffusion Based Text-Guided Image Editing Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02426/) (2023)
- [Magicremover: Tuning-free Text-guided Image inpainting with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02848/) (2023)
- [LoMOE: Localized Multi-Object Editing via Multi-Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00437/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [MiniMax-Remover: Taming Bad Noise Helps Video Object Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24873/) (2025)
- [OmniPaint: Mastering Object-Oriented Editing via Disentangled Insertion-Removal Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08677/) (2025)
- [SmartEraser: Remove Anything from Images using Masked-Region Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08279/) (2025)
- [Precise Object and Effect Removal with Adaptive Target-Aware Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22636/) (2025)
- [From Ideal to Real: Stable Video Object Removal under Imperfect Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09283/) (2026)
- [WorldAct: Activating Monolithic 3D Worlds into Interactive-Ready Object-Centric Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15843/) (2026)
- [Geometric Image Editing via Effects-Sensitive In-Context Inpainting with Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08388/) (2026)
- [DORS: Dynamic Attention Routing for Diffusion-based Object Removal in Dense Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16656/) (2026)
- [BeyondMasks: Evaluating Causal and Physical Consistency in Video Object Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20107/) (2026)
- [You Only Erase Once: Erasing Anything without Bringing Unexpected Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27599/) (2026)
- [AdaEraser: Training-Free Object Removal via Adaptive Attention Suppression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15921/) (2026)
- [VOR-Bench: A Human Perception-Driven Benchmark for Video Object Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16878/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce textttReMOVE, a novel reference-free metric for assessing object erasure efficacy in diffusion-based image editing models post-generation. Unlike existing measures such as LPIPS and CLIPScore, textttReMOVE addresses the challenge of evaluating inpainting without a reference image, common in practical scenarios. It effectively distinguishes between object removal and replacement. This is a key issue in diffusion models due to stochastic nature of image generation. Traditional metrics fail to align with the intuitive definition of inpainting, which aims for (1) seamless object removal within masked regions (2) while preserving the background continuity. textttReMOVE not only correlates with state-of-the-art metrics and aligns with human perception but also captures the nuanced aspects of the inpainting process, providing a finer-grained evaluation of the generated outputs.