Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Xuchen, Li, Xuzhao, Gao, Jiahui, Pi, Renjie, Hu, Shiyu, Zhang, Wentao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Li, Xuchen
Li, Xuzhao
Gao, Jiahui
Pi, Renjie
Hu, Shiyu
Zhang, Wentao
author_facet Li, Xuchen
Li, Xuzhao
Gao, Jiahui
Pi, Renjie
Hu, Shiyu
Zhang, Wentao
contents Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at many multimodal tasks, yet they frequently struggle with tasks requiring precise understanding and handling of fine-grained visual elements. This is mainly due to information loss during image encoding or insufficient attention to critical regions. Recent work has shown promise by incorporating pixel-level visual information into the reasoning process, enabling VLMs to access high-resolution visual details during their thought process. However, this pixel-level information is often overused, leading to inefficiency and distraction from irrelevant visual details. To address these challenges, we propose the first framework for adaptive pixel reasoning that dynamically determines necessary pixel-level operations based on the input query. Specifically, we first apply operation-aware supervised fine-tuning to establish baseline competence in textual reasoning and visual operations, then design a novel rollout-guided reinforcement learning framework relying on feedback of the model's own responses, which enables the VLM to determine when pixel operations should be invoked based on query difficulty. Experiments on extensive multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our model achieves superior performance while significantly reducing unnecessary visual operations. Impressively, our model achieves 73.4\% accuracy on HR-Bench 4K while maintaining a tool usage ratio of only 20.1\%, improving accuracy and simultaneously reducing tool usage by 66.5\% compared to the previous methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_01681
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning
Li, Xuchen
Li, Xuzhao
Gao, Jiahui
Pi, Renjie
Hu, Shiyu
Zhang, Wentao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at many multimodal tasks, yet they frequently struggle with tasks requiring precise understanding and handling of fine-grained visual elements. This is mainly due to information loss during image encoding or insufficient attention to critical regions. Recent work has shown promise by incorporating pixel-level visual information into the reasoning process, enabling VLMs to access high-resolution visual details during their thought process. However, this pixel-level information is often overused, leading to inefficiency and distraction from irrelevant visual details. To address these challenges, we propose the first framework for adaptive pixel reasoning that dynamically determines necessary pixel-level operations based on the input query. Specifically, we first apply operation-aware supervised fine-tuning to establish baseline competence in textual reasoning and visual operations, then design a novel rollout-guided reinforcement learning framework relying on feedback of the model's own responses, which enables the VLM to determine when pixel operations should be invoked based on query difficulty. Experiments on extensive multimodal reasoning benchmarks show that our model achieves superior performance while significantly reducing unnecessary visual operations. Impressively, our model achieves 73.4\% accuracy on HR-Bench 4K while maintaining a tool usage ratio of only 20.1\%, improving accuracy and simultaneously reducing tool usage by 66.5\% compared to the previous methods.
title Look Less, Reason More: Rollout-Guided Adaptive Pixel-Space Reasoning
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01681