# Retrieval Visual Contrastive Decoding to Mitigate Object Hallucinations in Large Vision-Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20569 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20569/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Hallucination mitigation in LVLMs, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 18 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 May 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Hallucination mitigation in LVLMs](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/hallucination-mitigation-in-lvlms/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [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)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [VisualBERT: A Simple and Performant Baseline for Vision and Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03557/) (2019)
- [Mitigating Object Hallucinations in Large Vision-Language Models through Visual Contrastive Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16922/) (2023)
- [mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04257/) (2023)
- [OPERA: Alleviating Hallucination in Multi-Modal Large Language Models via Over-Trust Penalty and Retrospection-Allocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17911/) (2023)
- [Multi-Modal Hallucination Control by Visual Information Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14003/) (2024)
- [Aligning Modalities in Vision Large Language Models via Preference Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11411/) (2024)
- [HALC: Object Hallucination Reduction via Adaptive Focal-Contrast Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00425/) (2024)
- [Holistic Analysis of Hallucination in GPT-4V(ision): Bias and Interference Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03287/) (2023)
- [How Many Unicorns Are in This Image? A Safety Evaluation Benchmark for Vision LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16101/) (2023)
- [Mementos: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Model Reasoning over Image Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10529/) (2024)
- [Plausible May Not Be Faithful: Probing Object Hallucination in Vision-Language Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07688/) (2022)
- [Pensieve: Retrospect-then-Compare Mitigates Visual Hallucination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14401/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [3D-VCD: Hallucination Mitigation in 3D-LLM Embodied Agents through Visual Contrastive Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08645/) (2026)
- [MACD: Model-Aware Contrastive Decoding via Counterfactual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01740/) (2026)
- [GEASS: Gated Evidence-Adaptive Selective Caption Trust for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01733/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite significant advancements in Large Vision-Language Models, Object Hallucination (OH) remains a persistent challenge. Building upon prior studies on contrastive decoding that address this issue without requiring additional model training, we introduce RVCD (Retrieval Visual Contrastive Decoding), an advanced method to suppress OH. RVCD leverages both negative and positive images at the logit level, explicitly referencing AI-generated images designed to represent a single concept. Our approach demonstrates substantial improvements over existing decoding-based methods.