Yan Peng

Chao Wang, Chunbai Zhang, Yongxiao Tian et al.

Visual reasoning refers to the task of solving questions about visual information. Current visual reasoning methods typically employ pre-trained vision-language model (VLM) strategies or deep neural network approaches. However, existing efforts are constrained by limited reasoning interpretability, while hindering by the phenomenon of underspecification in the question text. Additionally, the absence of fine-grained visual knowledge limits the precise understanding of subject behavior in visual reasoning tasks. To address these issues, we propose VIKSER (Visual Knowledge-Driven Self-Reinforcing Reasoning Framework). Specifically, VIKSER, trained using knowledge distilled from large language models, extracts fine-grained visual knowledge with the assistance of visual relationship detection techniques. Subsequently, VIKSER utilizes fine-grained visual knowledge to paraphrase the question with underspecification. Additionally, we design a novel prompting method called Chain-of-Evidence (CoE), which leverages the power of "evidence for reasoning" to endow VIKSER with interpretable reasoning capabilities. Meanwhile, the integration of self-reflection technology empowers VIKSER with the ability to learn and improve from its mistakes. Experiments conducted on widely used datasets demonstrate that VIKSER achieves new state-of-the-art (SOTA) results in relevant tasks. Moreover, VIKSER achieves performance on par with leading proprietary models, such as the latest ChatGPT-5.

Yong Chen, Zhi-Gang Jia, Ya-Xin Peng et al.

Quaternion singular value decomposition (QSVD) is a robust technique of digital watermarking which can extract high quality watermarks from watermarked images with low distortion. In this paper, QSVD technique is further investigated and an efficient robust watermarking scheme is proposed. The improved algebraic structure-preserving method is proposed to handle the problem of "explosion of complexity" occurred in the conventional QSVD design. Secret information is transmitted blindly by incorporating in QSVD two new strategies, namely, coefficient pair selection and adaptive embedding. Unlike conventional QSVD which embeds watermarks in a single imaginary unit, we propose to adaptively embed the watermark into the optimal hiding position using the Normalized Cross-Correlation (NC) method. This avoids the selection of coefficient pair with less correlation, and thus, it reduces embedding impact by decreasing the maximum modification of coefficient values. In this way, compared with conventional QSVD, the proposed watermarking strategy avoids more modifications to a single color image layer and a better visual quality of the watermarked image is observed. Meanwhile, adaptive QSVD resists some common geometric attacks, and it improves the robustness of conventional QSVD. With these improvements, our method outperforms conventional QSVD. Its superiority over other state-of-the-art methods is also demonstrated experimentally.