# Fix Before Search: Benchmarking Agentic Query Visual Pre-processing in Multimodal Retrieval-augmented Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13179 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13179/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 37 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Multimodal RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/multimodal-rag/)
- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06281/) (2023)
- [MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13394/) (2023)
- [LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13372/) (2024)
- [Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09516/) (2025)
- [MiniCPM-V: A GPT-4V Level MLLM on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01800/) (2024)
- [Interleaving Retrieval with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Knowledge-Intensive Multi-Step Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10509/) (2022)
- [DeepSeek-VL2: Mixture-of-Experts Vision-Language Models for Advanced Multimodal Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10302/) (2024)
- [Phi-4-Mini Technical Report: Compact yet Powerful Multimodal Language Models via Mixture-of-LoRAs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01743/) (2025)
- [Precise Zero-Shot Dense Retrieval without Relevance Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10496/) (2022)
- [Nomic Embed: Training a Reproducible Long Context Text Embedder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01613/) (2024)
- [MuRAG: Multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Generator for Open Question Answering over Images and Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02928/) (2022)
- [RQ-RAG: Learning to Refine Queries for Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00610/) (2024)
- [WebQA: Multihop and Multimodal QA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00590/) (2021)
- [NaturalBench: Evaluating Vision-Language Models on Natural Adversarial Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14669/) (2024)
- [RAG-Driver: Generalisable Driving Explanations with Retrieval-Augmented In-Context Learning in Multi-Modal Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10828/) (2024)
- [MMed-RAG: Versatile Multimodal RAG System for Medical Vision Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13085/) (2024)
- [Adversarial VQA: A New Benchmark for Evaluating the Robustness of VQA Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00245/) (2021)
- [Process vs. Outcome Reward: Which is Better for Agentic RAG Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14069/) (2025)
- [DeepRetrieval: Hacking Real Search Engines and Retrievers with Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00223/) (2025)
- [Can Language Models be Instructed to Protect Personal Information?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02224/) (2023)
- [MRAG-Bench: Vision-Centric Evaluation for Retrieval-Augmented Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08182/) (2024)
- [Insight Over Sight: Exploring the Vision-Knowledge Conflicts in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08145/) (2024)

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

- [OpenSearch-VL: An Open Recipe for Frontier Multimodal Search Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05185/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Generation (MRAG) has emerged as a key paradigm for grounding MLLMs with external knowledge. While query pre-processing (e.g., rewriting) is standard in text-based RAG, existing MRAG pipelines predominantly treat visual inputs as static and immutable, implicitly assuming they are noise-free. However, real-world visual queries are often ``imperfect'' -- suffering from geometric distortions, quality degradation, or semantic ambiguity -- leading to catastrophic retrieval failures. To address this gap, we propose V-QPP-Bench, the first comprehensive benchmark dedicated to Visual Query Pre-processing (V-QPP). We formulate V-QPP as an agentic decision-making task where MLLMs must autonomously diagnose imperfections and deploy perceptual tools to refine queries. Our extensive evaluation across 46,700 imperfect queries and diverse MRAG paradigms reveals three critical insights: (1) Vulnerability -- visual imperfections severely degrade both retrieval recall and end-to-end MRAG performance; (2) Restoration Potential & Bottleneck -- while oracle preprocessing recovers near-perfect performance, off-the-shelf MLLMs struggle with tool selection and parameter prediction without specialized training; and (3) Training Enhancement -- supervised fine-tuning enables compact models to achieve comparable or superior performance to larger proprietary models, demonstrating the benchmark's value for developing robust MRAG systems The code is available at https://github.com/phycholosogy/VQQPBench