# TeSG: Textual Semantic Guidance for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16730 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.16730/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jun 2025.

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

- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [Target-aware Dual Adversarial Learning and a Multi-scenario Multi-Modality Benchmark to Fuse Infrared and Visible for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16220/) (2022)
- [LLVIP: A Visible-infrared Paired Dataset for Low-light Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10831/) (2021)
- [CDDFuse: Correlation-Driven Dual-Branch Feature Decomposition for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14461/) (2022)
- [DenseFuse: A Fusion Approach to Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08361/) (2018)
- [DDFM: Denoising Diffusion Model for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06840/) (2023)
- [Multi-interactive Feature Learning and a Full-time Multi-modality Benchmark for Image Fusion and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02097/) (2023)
- [RFN-Nest: An end-to-end residual fusion network for infrared and visible images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04286/) (2021)
- [LRRNet: A Novel Representation Learning Guided Fusion Network for Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05172/) (2023)
- [Text-IF: Leveraging Semantic Text Guidance for Degradation-Aware and Interactive Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16387/) (2024)
- [Dif-Fusion: Towards High Color Fidelity in Infrared and Visible Image Fusion with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08072/) (2023)
- [Image Fusion via Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02235/) (2024)
- [TextFusion: Unveiling the Power of Textual Semantics for Controllable Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14209/) (2023)
- [SwinFuse: A Residual Swin Transformer Fusion Network for Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11436/) (2022)
- [MMDRFuse: Distilled Mini-Model with Dynamic Refresh for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15641/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Infrared and visible image fusion (IVF) aims to combine complementary information from both image modalities, producing more informative and comprehensive outputs. Recently, text-guided IVF has shown great potential due to its flexibility and versatility. However, the effective integration and utilization of textual semantic information remains insufficiently studied. To tackle these challenges, we introduce textual semantics at two levels: the mask semantic level and the text semantic level, both derived from textual descriptions extracted by large Vision-Language Models (VLMs). Building on this, we propose Textual Semantic Guidance for infrared and visible image fusion, termed TeSG, which guides the image synthesis process in a way that is optimized for downstream tasks such as detection and segmentation. Specifically, TeSG consists of three core components: a Semantic Information Generator (SIG), a Mask-Guided Cross-Attention (MGCA) module, and a Text-Driven Attentional Fusion (TDAF) module. The SIG generates mask and text semantics based on textual descriptions. The MGCA module performs initial attention-based fusion of visual features from both infrared and visible images, guided by mask semantics. Finally, the TDAF module refines the fusion process with gated attention driven by text semantics. Extensive experiments demonstrate the competitiveness of our approach, particularly in terms of performance on downstream tasks, compared to existing state-of-the-art methods.