# Rethinking Conditional Generation for Underwater Salient Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01825 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01825/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Semantic Segmentation from a Sequence-to-Sequence Perspective with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15840/) (2020)
- [PVT v2: Improved Baselines with Pyramid Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13797/) (2021)
- [Structure-measure: A New Way to Evaluate Foreground Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.00786/) (2017)
- [Enhanced-alignment Measure for Binary Foreground Map Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10421/) (2018)
- [Multi-scale Interactive Network for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09062/) (2020)
- [Visual Saliency Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12099/) (2021)
- [Zoom In and Out: A Mixed-scale Triplet Network for Camouflaged Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02688/) (2022)
- [Salient Object Detection via Integrity Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07663/) (2021)
- [Suppress and Balance: A Simple Gated Network for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08074/) (2020)
- [MedSegDiff-V2: Diffusion based Medical Image Segmentation with Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11798/) (2023)
- [Label Decoupling Framework for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11048/) (2020)
- [Real-world Underwater Enhancement: Challenges, Benchmarks, and Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05320/) (2019)
- [Hierarchical Integration Diffusion Model for Realistic Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12966/) (2023)
- [EDN: Salient Object Detection via Extremely-Downsampled Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13093/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models, Image Super-Resolution And Everything: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00736/) (2024)
- [TransNeXt: Robust Foveal Visual Perception for Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17132/) (2023)
- [Conditional Text Image Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10804/) (2023)
- [VSCode: General Visual Salient and Camouflaged Object Detection with 2D Prompt Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15011/) (2023)
- [TRACER: Extreme Attention Guided Salient Object Tracing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07380/) (2021)
- [HiDAnet: RGB-D Salient Object Detection via Hierarchical Depth Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07405/) (2023)
- [Multi-Scale and Detail-Enhanced Segment Anything Model for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04326/) (2024)
- [CoDi: Conditional Diffusion Distillation for Higher-Fidelity and Faster Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01407/) (2023)
- [Point-aware Interaction and CNN-induced Refinement Network for RGB-D Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08930/) (2023)
- [A Simple yet Effective Network based on Vision Transformer for Camouflaged Object and Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18922/) (2024)
- [Fantastic Animals and Where to Find Them: Segment Any Marine Animal with Dual SAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04996/) (2024)
- [CamoDiffusion: Camouflaged Object Detection via Conditional Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17932/) (2023)
- [SVAM: Saliency-guided Visual Attention Modeling by Autonomous Underwater Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06252/) (2020)
- [Alignment-Free RGBT Salient Object Detection: Semantics-guided Asymmetric Correlation Network and A Unified Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00917/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Salient Object Detection in underwater images remains challenging due to low contrast, uneven illumination, and color distortion caused by scattering and absorption effects, which limit the effectiveness of conventional SOD methods in underwater environments. To address these challenges, we propose a Degradation-aware Conditional Generation Network (DCGNet), specifically designed to construct reliable conditional features for underwater saliency generation. First, we design a Dynamic Multi-Granularity module (DMG) grounded in the human visual system to robustly detect salient objects of varying scales with blurred boundaries. Then, we develop an Underwater Physics-Prior module (UPP), which utilizes pseudo-depth guidance to estimate underwater light attenuation and backscatter, thereby restoring degradation-aware RGB features and mitigating color distortion and boundary ambiguity. Based on the physics-guided representation, we introduce an Underwater Spatial Gaussian module (USG), which constructs a spatial Gaussian saliency prior from the strongest guided response to enhance object-centered salient regions and suppress cluttered underwater backgrounds. In addition, a lightweight timestep-adaptive Diffusion Transformer (DiT) bottleneck is inserted into the denoising decoder to refine fused features at different diffusion timesteps. Comprehensive experiments on USOD10K, USOD, CSOD10K, MAS3K, and RMAS demonstrate that DCGNet significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods, verifying its potential for complex underwater visual applications.