# Beyond RGB: Adaptive Parallel Processing for RAW Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.13163 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13163/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Variational Inference with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05770/) (2015)
- [MMDetection: Open MMLab Detection Toolbox and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07155/) (2019)
- [DINO: DETR with Improved DeNoising Anchor Boxes for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03605/) (2022)
- [Cascade R-CNN: Delving into High Quality Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00726/) (2017)
- [YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08430/) (2021)
- [An overview of gradient descent optimization algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04747/) (2016)
- [Weight Normalization: A Simple Reparameterization to Accelerate Training of Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07868/) (2016)
- [DN-DETR: Accelerate DETR Training by Introducing Query DeNoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01305/) (2022)
- [Benchmarking Robustness in Object Detection: Autonomous Driving when Winter is Coming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07484/) (2019)
- [Image-Adaptive YOLO for Object Detection in Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08088/) (2021)
- [Practical Deep Raw Image Denoising on Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06935/) (2020)
- [Rethinking Noise Synthesis and Modeling in Raw Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04756/) (2021)
- [Instance Segmentation in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14298/) (2023)
- [ReconfigISP: Reconfigurable Camera Image Processing Pipeline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04760/) (2021)
- [DynamicISP: Dynamically Controlled Image Signal Processor for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01146/) (2022)
- [Raw Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04264/) (2020)
- [GenISP: Neural ISP for Low-Light Machine Cognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03688/) (2022)
- [FeatEnHancer: Enhancing Hierarchical Features for Object Detection and Beyond Under Low-Light Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03594/) (2023)
- [RAW-Adapter: Adapting Pre-trained Visual Model to Camera RAW Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14802/) (2024)
- [High Dynamic Range and Super-Resolution from Raw Image Bursts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14671/) (2022)
- [Rawgment: Noise-Accounted RAW Augmentation Enables Recognition in a Wide Variety of Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.16046/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [RAWild: Sensor-Agnostic RAW Object Detection via Physics-Guided Curve and Grid Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05941/) (2026)
- [SpiralDiff: Spiral Diffusion with LoRA for RGB-to-RAW Conversion Across Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14885/) (2026)
- [FreqAdapt: Frequency-Adaptive Processing for RAW Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.03385/) (2026)
- [RawVLA: Embodied Neural Image Signal Processor For Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37530/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object detection models are typically applied to standard RGB images processed through Image Signal Processing (ISP) pipelines, which are designed to enhance sensor-captured RAW images for human vision. However, these ISP functions can lead to a loss of critical information that may be essential in optimizing for computer vision tasks, such as object detection. In this work, we introduce Raw Adaptation Module (RAM), a module designed to replace the traditional ISP, with parameters optimized specifically for RAW object detection. Inspired by the parallel processing mechanisms of the human visual system, RAM departs from existing learned ISP methods by applying multiple ISP functions in parallel rather than sequentially, allowing for a more comprehensive capture of image features. These processed representations are then fused in a specialized module, which dynamically integrates and optimizes the information for the target task. This novel approach not only leverages the full potential of RAW sensor data but also enables task-specific pre-processing, resulting in superior object detection performance. Our approach outperforms RGB-based methods and achieves state-of-the-art results across diverse RAW image datasets under varying lighting conditions and dynamic ranges.