EvoCut: Multi-Layer Evolution-Aware Visual Token Compression for Efficient Large Vision-Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Lu, Hongyu, Zhang, Feng, Jin, Wenwei, Hu, Huanling, Zhang, Pengfei, Hu, Yao, Li, Jiawei, Jiang, Shikai
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Lu, Hongyu
Zhang, Feng
Jin, Wenwei
Hu, Huanling
Zhang, Pengfei
Hu, Yao
Li, Jiawei
Jiang, Shikai
author_facet Lu, Hongyu
Zhang, Feng
Jin, Wenwei
Hu, Huanling
Zhang, Pengfei
Hu, Yao
Li, Jiawei
Jiang, Shikai
contents Large vision-language models (LVLMs) achieve strong performance on image and video understanding tasks, but their inference efficiency is constrained by the large number of visual tokens produced by vision encoders. Most existing visual token compression methods estimate token importance from attention scores or representation properties at specific layers, overlooking how visual tokens evolve across the vision encoder. Such layer-specific criteria may provide incomplete importance estimates and limit performance preservation after compression. To address this issue, we analyze layer-wise visual token evolution directions and observe that tokens form multiple group evolution directions across vision-encoder layers. Our analysis further shows that informative tokens tend to exhibit persistent deviations from common group evolution directions. Based on this observation, we propose EvoCut, a training-free and attention-free visual token compression method that estimates token importance from multi-layer evolution deviation. Experimental results show that EvoCut can retain only 11.1\% of the visual tokens on LLaVA-1.5-7B while preserving 94.4\% of the average performance, demonstrating its effectiveness in balancing efficiency and accuracy.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_01756
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EvoCut: Multi-Layer Evolution-Aware Visual Token Compression for Efficient Large Vision-Language Models
Lu, Hongyu
Zhang, Feng
Jin, Wenwei
Hu, Huanling
Zhang, Pengfei
Hu, Yao
Li, Jiawei
Jiang, Shikai
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Large vision-language models (LVLMs) achieve strong performance on image and video understanding tasks, but their inference efficiency is constrained by the large number of visual tokens produced by vision encoders. Most existing visual token compression methods estimate token importance from attention scores or representation properties at specific layers, overlooking how visual tokens evolve across the vision encoder. Such layer-specific criteria may provide incomplete importance estimates and limit performance preservation after compression. To address this issue, we analyze layer-wise visual token evolution directions and observe that tokens form multiple group evolution directions across vision-encoder layers. Our analysis further shows that informative tokens tend to exhibit persistent deviations from common group evolution directions. Based on this observation, we propose EvoCut, a training-free and attention-free visual token compression method that estimates token importance from multi-layer evolution deviation. Experimental results show that EvoCut can retain only 11.1\% of the visual tokens on LLaVA-1.5-7B while preserving 94.4\% of the average performance, demonstrating its effectiveness in balancing efficiency and accuracy.
title EvoCut: Multi-Layer Evolution-Aware Visual Token Compression for Efficient Large Vision-Language Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.01756