# UniRain: Unified Image Deraining with RAG-based Dataset Distillation and Multi-objective Reweighted Optimization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03967 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03967/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Vision mixture-of-experts, one of 12 directions in Mixture-of-experts.
- Builds on 41 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- Mixture-of-experts / [Vision mixture-of-experts](https://mlsanity.com/moe/vision-mixture-of-experts/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05271/) (2024)
- [Gradient Surgery for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06782/) (2020)
- [Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02808/) (2021)
- [LLaVA-NeXT-Interleave: Tackling Multi-image, Video, and 3D in Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07895/) (2024)
- [Introduction to Multi-Armed Bandits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07272/) (2019)
- [Multi-Task Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09796/) (2020)
- [Deep Joint Rain Detection and Removal from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07769/) (2016)
- [Progressive Image Deraining Networks: A Better and Simpler Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09221/) (2019)
- [Multi-Scale Progressive Fusion Network for Single Image Deraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10985/) (2020)
- [TransWeather: Transformer-based Restoration of Images Degraded by Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14813/) (2021)
- [Learning A Sparse Transformer Network for Effective Image Deraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11950/) (2023)
- [Attentive Generative Adversarial Network for Raindrop Removal from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10098/) (2017)
- [Spatial Attentive Single-Image Deraining with a High Quality Real Rain Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01538/) (2019)
- [A Model-driven Deep Neural Network for Single Image Rain Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01333/) (2020)
- [Restoring Images in Adverse Weather Conditions via Histogram Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10172/) (2024)
- [Bidirectional Multi-Scale Implicit Neural Representations for Image Deraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01547/) (2024)
- [MobileVLM: A Vision-Language Model for Better Intra- and Inter-UI Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14818/) (2024)
- [Toward Real-world Single Image Deraining: A New Benchmark and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05514/) (2022)
- [From Sky to the Ground: A Large-scale Benchmark and Simple Baseline Towards Real Rain Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03867/) (2023)
- [FoundIR: Unleashing Million-scale Training Data to Advance Foundation Models for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01427/) (2024)
- [Semi-Parametric Neural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11824/) (2022)
- [Towards Unified Deep Image Deraining: A Survey and A New Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03535/) (2023)
- [Not Just Streaks: Towards Ground Truth for Single Image Deraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10779/) (2022)
- [WeatherBench: A Real-World Benchmark Dataset for All-in-One Adverse Weather Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11642/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [LL-Bench: Rethinking Low-Level Vision Evaluation in the Era of Large-Scale Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02535/) (2026)
- [The Second LoViF 2026 Challenge on Real-World All-in-One Image Restoration: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21118/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite significant progress has been made in image deraining, we note that most existing methods are often developed for only specific types of rain degradation and fail to generalize across diverse real-world rainy scenes. How to effectively model different rain degradations within a universal framework is important for real-world image deraining. In this paper, we propose UniRain, an effective unified image deraining framework capable of restoring images degraded by rain streak and raindrop under both daytime and nighttime conditions. To better enhance unified model generalization, we construct an intelligent retrieval augmented generation (RAG)-based dataset distillation pipeline that selects high-quality training samples from all public deraining datasets for better mixed training. Furthermore, we incorporate a simple yet effective multi-objective reweighted optimization strategy into the asymmetric mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture to facilitate consistent performance and improve robustness across diverse scenes. Extensive experiments show that our framework performs favorably against the state-of-the-art models on our proposed benchmarks and multiple public datasets.