# A Lightweight and Effective Image Tampering Localization Network with Vision Mamba

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09941 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09941/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Vision Mamba backbones, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 8 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Vision Mamba backbones](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/vision-mamba-backbones/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Fighting Fake News: Image Splice Detection via Learned Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04096/) (2018)
- [TruFor: Leveraging all-round clues for trustworthy image forgery detection and localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10957/) (2022)
- [MVSS-Net: Multi-View Multi-Scale Supervised Networks for Image Manipulation Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08935/) (2021)
- [Learning JPEG Compression Artifacts for Image Manipulation Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12947/) (2021)
- [Enhanced Spatio-Temporal Interaction Learning for Video Deraining: A Faster and Better Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12318/) (2021)
- [Can We Get Rid of Handcrafted Feature Extractors? SparseViT: Nonsemantics-Centered, Parameter-Efficient Image Manipulation Localization through Spare-Coding Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14598/) (2024)
- [Effective Image Tampering Localization via Enhanced Transformer and Co-attention Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09306/) (2023)
- [Exploring Multi-view Pixel Contrast for General and Robust Image Forgery Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13565/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Unmasking Synthetic Realities in Generative AI: A Comprehensive Review of Adversarially Robust Deepfake Detection Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21157/) (2025)
- [Progressive Decision-Making for Localizing Open-Ended AI-Generated Image Forgeries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29156/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Current image tampering localization methods primarily rely on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Transformers. While CNNs suffer from limited local receptive fields, Transformers offer global context modeling at the expense of quadratic computational complexity. Recently, the state space model Mamba has emerged as a competitive alternative, enabling linear-complexity global dependency modeling. Inspired by it, we propose a lightweight and effective FORensic network based on vision MAmba (ForMa) for blind image tampering localization. Firstly, ForMa captures multi-scale global features that achieves efficient global dependency modeling through linear complexity. Then the pixel-wise localization map is generated by a lightweight decoder, which employs a parameter-free pixel shuffle layer for upsampling. Additionally, a noise-assisted decoding strategy is proposed to integrate complementary manipulation traces from tampered images, boosting decoder sensitivity to forgery cues. Experimental results on 10 standard datasets demonstrate that ForMa achieves state-of-the-art generalization ability and robustness, while maintaining the lowest computational complexity. Code is available at https://github.com/multimediaFor/ForMa.