IF-Bench: Benchmarking and Enhancing MLLMs for Infrared Images with Generative Visual Prompting

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Tao, Hong, Yuyang, Xia, Yang, Ding, Kun, Zhang, Zeyu, Wang, Ying, Xiang, Shiming, Pan, Chunhong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhang, Tao
Hong, Yuyang
Xia, Yang
Ding, Kun
Zhang, Zeyu
Wang, Ying
Xiang, Shiming
Pan, Chunhong
author_facet Zhang, Tao
Hong, Yuyang
Xia, Yang
Ding, Kun
Zhang, Zeyu
Wang, Ying
Xiang, Shiming
Pan, Chunhong
contents Recent advances in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have led to impressive progress across various benchmarks. However, their capability in understanding infrared images remains unexplored. To address this gap, we introduce IF-Bench, the first high-quality benchmark designed for evaluating multimodal understanding of infrared images. IF-Bench consists of 499 images sourced from 23 infrared datasets and 680 carefully curated visual question-answer pairs, covering 10 essential dimensions of image understanding. Based on this benchmark, we systematically evaluate over 40 open-source and closed-source MLLMs, employing cyclic evaluation, bilingual assessment, and hybrid judgment strategies to enhance the reliability of the results. Our analysis reveals how model scale, architecture, and inference paradigms affect infrared image comprehension, providing valuable insights for this area. Furthermore, we propose a training-free generative visual prompting (GenViP) method, which leverages advanced image editing models to translate infrared images into semantically and spatially aligned RGB counterparts, thereby mitigating domain distribution shifts. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method consistently yields significant performance improvements across a wide range of MLLMs. The benchmark and code are available at https://github.com/casiatao/IF-Bench.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_09663
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle IF-Bench: Benchmarking and Enhancing MLLMs for Infrared Images with Generative Visual Prompting
Zhang, Tao
Hong, Yuyang
Xia, Yang
Ding, Kun
Zhang, Zeyu
Wang, Ying
Xiang, Shiming
Pan, Chunhong
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Recent advances in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have led to impressive progress across various benchmarks. However, their capability in understanding infrared images remains unexplored. To address this gap, we introduce IF-Bench, the first high-quality benchmark designed for evaluating multimodal understanding of infrared images. IF-Bench consists of 499 images sourced from 23 infrared datasets and 680 carefully curated visual question-answer pairs, covering 10 essential dimensions of image understanding. Based on this benchmark, we systematically evaluate over 40 open-source and closed-source MLLMs, employing cyclic evaluation, bilingual assessment, and hybrid judgment strategies to enhance the reliability of the results. Our analysis reveals how model scale, architecture, and inference paradigms affect infrared image comprehension, providing valuable insights for this area. Furthermore, we propose a training-free generative visual prompting (GenViP) method, which leverages advanced image editing models to translate infrared images into semantically and spatially aligned RGB counterparts, thereby mitigating domain distribution shifts. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method consistently yields significant performance improvements across a wide range of MLLMs. The benchmark and code are available at https://github.com/casiatao/IF-Bench.
title IF-Bench: Benchmarking and Enhancing MLLMs for Infrared Images with Generative Visual Prompting
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09663