ACPO: Anchor-Constrained Perceptual Optimization for Diffusion Models with No-Reference Quality Guidance

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yang, Yang, Meng, Feifan, Fang, Han, Zhang, Weiming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917446896582656
author Yang, Yang
Meng, Feifan
Fang, Han
Zhang, Weiming
author_facet Yang, Yang
Meng, Feifan
Fang, Han
Zhang, Weiming
contents Diffusion models have achieved remarkable success in image generation, yet their training is predominantly driven by full-reference objectives that enforce pixel-wise similarity to ground-truth images.Such supervision, while effective for fidelity, may insufficient in terms of subjective visual perception quality and text-image semantic consistency. In this work, we investigate the problem of incorporating no-reference perceptual quality into diffusion training. A key challenge is that directly optimizing perceptual signals, such as those provided by no-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) models, introduces a mismatch with the original diffusion objective, leading to training instability and distributional drift during fine-tuning. To address this issue, we propose an anchor-constrained optimization framework that enables stable perceptual adaptation. Specifically, we leverage a learned NR-IQA model as a perceptual guidance signal, while introducing an anchor-based regularization that enforces consistency with the base diffusion model in terms of noise prediction. This design effectively balances perceptual quality improvement and generative fidelity, allowing controlled adaptation toward perceptually favorable outputs without compromising the original generative behavior. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method consistently enhances perceptual quality while preserving generation diversity and training stability, highlighting the effectiveness of anchor-constrained perceptual optimization for diffusion models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_26348
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ACPO: Anchor-Constrained Perceptual Optimization for Diffusion Models with No-Reference Quality Guidance
Yang, Yang
Meng, Feifan
Fang, Han
Zhang, Weiming
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Diffusion models have achieved remarkable success in image generation, yet their training is predominantly driven by full-reference objectives that enforce pixel-wise similarity to ground-truth images.Such supervision, while effective for fidelity, may insufficient in terms of subjective visual perception quality and text-image semantic consistency. In this work, we investigate the problem of incorporating no-reference perceptual quality into diffusion training. A key challenge is that directly optimizing perceptual signals, such as those provided by no-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) models, introduces a mismatch with the original diffusion objective, leading to training instability and distributional drift during fine-tuning. To address this issue, we propose an anchor-constrained optimization framework that enables stable perceptual adaptation. Specifically, we leverage a learned NR-IQA model as a perceptual guidance signal, while introducing an anchor-based regularization that enforces consistency with the base diffusion model in terms of noise prediction. This design effectively balances perceptual quality improvement and generative fidelity, allowing controlled adaptation toward perceptually favorable outputs without compromising the original generative behavior. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method consistently enhances perceptual quality while preserving generation diversity and training stability, highlighting the effectiveness of anchor-constrained perceptual optimization for diffusion models.
title ACPO: Anchor-Constrained Perceptual Optimization for Diffusion Models with No-Reference Quality Guidance
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.26348