# VAMamba: An Efficient Visual Adaptive Mamba for Image Restoration

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23601 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23601/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Mamba for image restoration, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 22 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2025.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Mamba for image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/mamba-for-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03981/) (2016)
- [Vision Mamba: Efficient Visual Representation Learning with Bidirectional State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09417/) (2024)
- [Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00364/) (2020)
- [Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02177/) (2016)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [Learning to See in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01934/) (2018)
- [Benchmarking Single Image Dehazing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04143/) (2017)
- [DeblurGAN: Blind Motion Deblurring Using Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07064/) (2017)
- [Kindling the Darkness: A Practical Low-light Image Enhancer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04161/) (2019)
- [Deep Joint Rain Detection and Removal from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07769/) (2016)
- [Toward Convolutional Blind Denoising of Real Photographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04686/) (2018)
- [Density-aware Single Image De-raining using a Multi-stream Dense Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07412/) (2018)
- [LocalMamba: Visual State Space Model with Windowed Selective Scan](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09338/) (2024)
- [Real Image Denoising with Feature Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07396/) (2019)
- [Human-Aware Motion Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06816/) (2020)
- [PlainMamba: Improving Non-Hierarchical Mamba in Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17695/) (2024)
- [Defocus Deblurring Using Dual-Pixel Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00305/) (2020)
- [MambaCSR: Dual-Interleaved Scanning for Compressed Image Super-Resolution With SSMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11758/) (2024)
- [FDCE-Net: Underwater Image Enhancement with Embedding Frequency and Dual Color Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17936/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent Mamba-based image restoration methods have achieved promising results but remain limited by fixed scanning patterns and inefficient feature utilization. Conventional Mamba architectures rely on predetermined paths that cannot adapt to diverse degradations, constraining both restoration performance and computational efficiency. To overcome these limitations, we propose VAMamba, a Visual Adaptive Mamba framework with two key innovations. First, QCLAM(Queue-basedCacheLow-rankAdaptiveMemory)enhancesfeaturelearningthrougha FIFO cache that stores historical representations. Similarity between current LoRA-adapted and cached features guides intelligent fusion, enabling dynamic reuse while effectively controlling memorygrowth.Second, GPS-SS2D(GreedyPathScanSS2D)introducesadaptive scanning. A Vision Transformer generates score maps to estimate pixel importance, and a greedy strategy de termines optimal forward and backward scanning paths. These learned trajectories replace rigid patterns, enabling SS2D to perform targeted feature extraction. The integration of QCLAM and GPS-SS2D allows VAMamba to adaptively focus on degraded regions while maintaining high computational efficiency. Extensive experiments across diverse restoration tasks demonstrate that VAMamba consistently outperforms existing approaches in both restoration quality and efficiency, establishing new benchmarks for adaptive image restoration. Our code is available at https://github.com/WaterHQH/VAMamba.