# Bridging Semantic Logic Gaps: A Cognition Inspired Multimodal Boundary Preserving Network for Image Manipulation Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07216 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07216/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [PVT v2: Improved Baselines with Pyramid Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13797/) (2021)
- [CDDFuse: Correlation-Driven Dual-Branch Feature Decomposition for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14461/) (2022)
- [Fighting Fake News: Image Splice Detection via Learned Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04096/) (2018)
- [PSCC-Net: Progressive Spatio-Channel Correlation Network for Image Manipulation Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10596/) (2021)
- [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)
- [FakeShield: Explainable Image Forgery Detection and Localization via Multi-modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02761/) (2024)
- [Image Manipulation Detection by Multi-View Multi-Scale Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06832/) (2021)
- [SIDA: Social Media Image Deepfake Detection, Localization and Explanation with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04292/) (2024)
- [Segmenting Transparent Objects in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13948/) (2020)
- [ObjectFormer for Image Manipulation Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14681/) (2022)
- [CamoFormer: Masked Separable Attention for Camouflaged Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06570/) (2022)
- [IML-ViT: Benchmarking Image Manipulation Localization by Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14863/) (2023)
- [IMDL-BenCo: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Codebase for Image Manipulation Detection & Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10580/) (2024)
- [Mesoscopic Insights: Orchestrating Multi-scale & Hybrid Architecture for Image Manipulation Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13753/) (2024)
- [Pixel-Inconsistency Modeling for Image Manipulation Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00234/) (2023)
- [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)
- [With a Little Help from your own Past: Prototypical Memory Networks for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12383/) (2023)
- [Language-guided Hierarchical Fine-grained Image Forgery Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23556/) (2024)
- [Exploring Multi-view Pixel Contrast for General and Robust Image Forgery Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13565/) (2024)
- [Dual Prototype Attention for Unsupervised Video Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12036/) (2022)
- [HAAV: Hierarchical Aggregation of Augmented Views for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16295/) (2023)
- [Stealthy Targeted Backdoor Attacks against Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05874/) (2024)
- [ReLoc: A Restoration-Assisted Framework for Robust Image Tampering Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.03930/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [EvoGuard: An Extensible Agentic RL-based Framework for Practical and Evolving AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17343/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The existing image manipulation localization (IML) models mainly relies on visual cues, but ignores the semantic logical relationships between content features. In fact, the content semantics conveyed by real images often conform to human cognitive laws. However, image manipulation technology usually destroys the internal relationship between content features, thus leaving semantic clues for IML. In this paper, we propose a cognition inspired multimodal boundary preserving network (CMB-Net). Specifically, CMB-Net utilizes large language models (LLMs) to analyze manipulated regions within images and generate prompt-based textual information to compensate for the lack of semantic relationships in the visual information. Considering that the erroneous texts induced by hallucination from LLMs will damage the accuracy of IML, we propose an image-text central ambiguity module (ITCAM). It assigns weights to the text features by quantifying the ambiguity between text and image features, thereby ensuring the beneficial impact of textual information. We also propose an image-text interaction module (ITIM) that aligns visual and text features using a correlation matrix for fine-grained interaction. Finally, inspired by invertible neural networks, we propose a restoration edge decoder (RED) that mutually generates input and output features to preserve boundary information in manipulated regions without loss. Extensive experiments show that CMB-Net outperforms most existing IML models. Our code is available on https://github.com/vpsg-research/CMB-Net.