# GECO: Geometrically Consistent Embedding with Lightspeed Inference

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00746 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00746/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 54 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Bootstrap your own latent: A new approach to self-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07733/) (2020)
- [Sinkhorn Distances: Lightspeed Computation of Optimal Transportation Distances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.0895/) (2013)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [Deep Clustering for Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05520/) (2018)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [iBOT: Image BERT Pre-Training with Online Tokenizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07832/) (2021)
- [Emergent Correspondence from Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03881/) (2023)
- [Fast3R: Towards 3D Reconstruction of 1000+ Images in One Forward Pass](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13928/) (2025)
- [Deep ViT Features as Dense Visual Descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05814/) (2021)
- [3D Menagerie: Modeling the 3D shape and pose of animals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07700/) (2016)
- [A Tale of Two Features: Stable Diffusion Complements DINO for Zero-Shot Semantic Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15347/) (2023)
- [CLIP-Mesh: Generating textured meshes from text using pretrained image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13333/) (2022)
- [Detect What You Can: Detecting and Representing Objects using Holistic Models and Body Parts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2031/) (2014)
- [Diffusion Hyperfeatures: Searching Through Time and Space for Semantic Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14334/) (2023)
- [Splicing ViT Features for Semantic Appearance Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.00424/) (2022)
- [Probing the 3D Awareness of Visual Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08636/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [MARCO: Navigating the Unseen Space of Semantic Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18267/) (2026)
- [Shape-of-You: Fused Gromov-Wasserstein Optimal Transport for Semantic Correspondence in-the-Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11618/) (2026)
- [Geometry Matters: 3D Foundation Priors for Learning Semantic Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30093/) (2026)
- [Quantum-Inspired Harmonic Decision Models: A Computational Framework for Music Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.05007/) (2026)
- [Ordered Diffusion for 3D Human Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05804/) (2026)
- [ImCorr: Sub-pixel Semantic Correspondence via Implicit Feature Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29193/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in feature learning have shown that self-supervised vision foundation models can capture semantic correspondences but often lack awareness of underlying 3D geometry. GECO addresses this gap by producing geometrically coherent features that semantically distinguish parts based on geometry (e.g., left/right eyes, front/back legs). We propose a training framework based on optimal transport, enabling supervision beyond keypoints, even under occlusions and disocclusions. With a lightweight architecture, GECO runs at 30 fps, 98.2% faster than prior methods, while achieving state-of-the-art performance on PFPascal, APK, and CUB, improving PCK by 6.0%, 6.2%, and 4.1%, respectively. Finally, we show that PCK alone is insufficient to capture geometric quality and introduce new metrics and insights for more geometry-aware feature learning. Link to project page: https://reginehartwig.github.io/publications/geco/