# Grounding-IQA: Grounding Multimodal Language Model for Image Quality Assessment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.17237 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17237/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image editing and quality assessment, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 49 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Nov 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Image editing and quality assessment](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/image-editing-and-quality-assessment/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08485/) (2023)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03744/) (2023)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [Decoupled Weight Decay Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05101/) (2017)
- [Kosmos-2: Grounding Multimodal Large Language Models to the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14824/) (2023)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [ImageReward: Learning and Evaluating Human Preferences for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05977/) (2023)
- [Exploring CLIP for Assessing the Look and Feel of Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12396/) (2022)
- [Shikra: Unleashing Multimodal LLM's Referential Dialogue Magic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15195/) (2023)
- [Generation and Comprehension of Unambiguous Object Descriptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02283/) (2015)
- [Image Quality Assessment: Unifying Structure and Texture Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07728/) (2020)
- [LISA: Reasoning Segmentation via Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00692/) (2023)
- [From Recognition to Cognition: Visual Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10830/) (2018)
- [mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04257/) (2023)
- [MANIQA: Multi-dimension Attention Network for No-Reference Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08958/) (2022)
- [Ferret: Refer and Ground Anything Anywhere at Any Granularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07704/) (2023)
- [Q-Align: Teaching LMMs for Visual Scoring via Discrete Text-Defined Levels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17090/) (2023)
- [GLaMM: Pixel Grounding Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03356/) (2023)
- [KonIQ-10k: An ecologically valid database for deep learning of blind image quality assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06180/) (2019)
- [GPT4RoI: Instruction Tuning Large Language Model on Region-of-Interest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03601/) (2023)
- [InternLM-XComposer: A Vision-Language Large Model for Advanced Text-image Comprehension and Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15112/) (2023)
- [Blind Image Quality Assessment via Vision-Language Correspondence: A Multitask Learning Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14968/) (2023)
- [Q-Bench: A Benchmark for General-Purpose Foundation Models on Low-level Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14181/) (2023)
- [TOPIQ: A Top-down Approach from Semantics to Distortions for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03060/) (2023)
- [Deep Neural Networks for No-Reference and Full-Reference Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01697/) (2016)

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

- [Zoom-IQA: Image Quality Assessment with Reliable Region-Aware Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02918/) (2026)
- [Scaling-up Perceptual Video Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22543/) (2025)
- [HiRQA: Hierarchical Ranking and Quality Alignment for Opinion-Unaware Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15130/) (2025)
- [OmniQuality-R: Advancing Reward Models Through All-Encompassing Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10609/) (2025)
- [IQA-Spider: Unifying Multi-Granularity Image Quality Assessment with Reasoning, Grounding and Referring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24553/) (2026)
- [IQA-T1: Tool-based Visual Evidence Reasoning for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12375/) (2026)
- [LMM-IQA: Image Quality Assessment for Low-Dose CT Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07298/) (2025)
- [Q-REAL: Towards Realism and Plausibility Evaluation for AI-Generated Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16908/) (2025)
- [Beyond Pixels: Benchmarking and Reward-Based Assessing Framework for Visual Spatial Aesthetics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05098/) (2025)
- [Panoptic Pairwise Distortion Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11004/) (2026)
- [iDiff: Interpretable Difference-aware Framework for Pairwise Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19522/) (2026)
- [LLaVA-Assessor: Building the Foundation LMM For Visual Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.26205/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The development of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) enables the evaluation of image quality through natural language descriptions. This advancement allows for more detailed assessments. However, these MLLM-based IQA methods primarily rely on general contextual descriptions, sometimes limiting fine-grained quality assessment. To address this limitation, we introduce a new image quality assessment (IQA) task paradigm, **grounding-IQA**. This paradigm integrates multimodal referring and grounding with IQA to realize more fine-grained quality perception, thereby extending existing IQA. Specifically, grounding-IQA comprises two subtasks: grounding-IQA-description (GIQA-DES) and visual question answering (GIQA-VQA). GIQA-DES involves detailed descriptions with precise locations (e.g., bounding boxes), while GIQA-VQA focuses on quality QA for local regions. To realize grounding-IQA, we construct a corresponding dataset, GIQA-160K, through our proposed automated annotation pipeline. Furthermore, we develop a well-designed benchmark, GIQA-Bench. The benchmark evaluates the grounding-IQA performance from three perspectives: description quality, VQA accuracy, and grounding precision. Experiments demonstrate that our proposed method facilitates the more fine-grained IQA application. Code: https://github.com/zhengchen1999/Grounding-IQA.