# SceneGlue: Scene-Aware Transformer for Feature Matching without Scene-Level Annotation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13941 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13941/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [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)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00607/) (2018)
- [LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13643/) (2023)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [D2-Net: A Trainable CNN for Joint Detection and Description of Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03561/) (2019)
- [HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05939/) (2017)
- [Revisiting Oxford and Paris: Large-Scale Image Retrieval Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11285/) (2018)
- [Learning to Find Good Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05971/) (2017)
- [ASLFeat: Learning Local Features of Accurate Shape and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10071/) (2020)
- [Patch2Pix: Epipolar-Guided Pixel-Level Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.01909/) (2020)
- [MatchFormer: Interleaving Attention in Transformers for Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09645/) (2022)
- [Learning Accurate Dense Correspondences and When to Trust Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01710/) (2021)
- [Learning Feature Descriptors using Camera Pose Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13324/) (2020)
- [Learning to Match Features with Seeded Graph Matching Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08771/) (2021)
- [ContextDesc: Local Descriptor Augmentation with Cross-Modality Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04084/) (2019)
- [ClusterGNN: Cluster-based Coarse-to-Fine Graph Neural Network for Efficient Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11700/) (2022)
- [An Image Patch is a Wave: Phase-Aware Vision MLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12294/) (2021)
- [MINIMA: Modality Invariant Image Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19412/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Assignment for Geometry Aware Local Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08427/) (2022)
- [Guide Local Feature Matching by Overlap Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09050/) (2022)
- [Adaptive Spot-Guided Transformer for Consistent Local Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16624/) (2023)
- [DeepMatcher: A Deep Transformer-based Network for Robust and Accurate Local Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02993/) (2023)
- [CoMatch: Dynamic Covisibility-Aware Transformer for Bilateral Subpixel-Level Semi-Dense Image Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23925/) (2025)

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

- [Radiation, Rotation and Scale Invariant Feature Descriptor for Multimodal Image Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06343/) (2026)
- [Geometry-Aligned Semantic Matching for Cross-Modal Planar Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03167/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Local feature matching plays a critical role in understanding the correspondence between cross-view images. However, traditional methods are constrained by the inherent local nature of feature descriptors, limiting their ability to capture non-local scene information that is essential for accurate cross-view correspondence. In this paper, we introduce SceneGlue, a scene-aware feature matching framework designed to overcome these limitations. SceneGlue leverages a hybridizable matching paradigm that integrates implicit parallel attention and explicit cross-view visibility estimation. The parallel attention mechanism simultaneously exchanges information among local descriptors within and across images, enhancing the scene's global context. To further enrich the scene awareness, we propose the Visibility Transformer, which explicitly categorizes features into visible and invisible regions, providing an understanding of cross-view scene visibility. By combining explicit and implicit scene-level awareness, SceneGlue effectively compensates for the local descriptor constraints. Notably, SceneGlue is trained using only local feature matches, without requiring scene-level groundtruth annotations. This scene-aware approach not only improves accuracy and robustness but also enhances interpretability compared to traditional methods. Extensive experiments on applications such as homography estimation, pose estimation, image matching, and visual localization validate SceneGlue's superior performance. The source code is available at https://github.com/songlin-du/SceneGlue.