Distortion-Perception Tradeoff

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Overview

The distortion-perception tradeoff asks how to reconstruct, compress, or estimate data while balancing closeness to a specific input against perceptual realism. Work spans rate-distortion-perception theory and practical image, audio, and signal methods, including diffusion and flow models that can vary their operating point between fidelity and perceptual quality. Researchers evaluate these methods with distortion measures, perceptual metrics, and downstream tasks such as recognition or clinical prediction. The central tension is that realistic generation can introduce details unsupported by the input, while strict distortion minimization can produce blurry or perceptually poor results; reliable ways to measure and control that balance remain important open problems.

Latest papers

CardsList

14 papers1 paper in the last four weeks, with none the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. The Hidden Perception Constraint in Task-Aware Compression

    Sep 28, 2026Sahan Liyanaarachchi, Semih Akkoc, Sennur Ulukus +1Learned Image CompressionRate-Distortion Optimization

    University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA · The Ohio State University Columbus, OH, USA

  2. Uncertainty-Guided Latent Diffusion Models for Faithful Super Resolution

    Aug 26, 2026Ren Wang, Yung-Yu ChuangImage Super-ResolutionDiffusion Guidance

    National Taiwan University · National Taiwan University, NTU AI-CoRE

  3. Flow Straight to Reality: Perceptually Consistent Flow Matching for Efficient Image Restoration

    Aug 11, 2026Sangwoo Jo, Donggeun Ko, Jayeon Kang +3Flow MatchingPerceptual Loss

    Korea University, Seoul, South Korea · Aim Future, Seoul, South Korea

  4. Rate-Distortion-Perception Theory: Redefining the Fundamental Limits of Information Representation

    Jul 19, 2026Photios A. Stavrou, Giuseppe Serra, Marios KountourisLearned Image CompressionRate-Distortion Theory

  5. DTI: Dynamic Trajectory Initialization for Generative Face Video Super-Resolution

    Jun 28, 2026Yingwei Tang, Chen Yan, Wendi Liu +2Diffusion TransformerVideo Super-Resolution

    Cooperative Medianet Innovation Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

  6. Flow Map Denoisers: Traversing the Distortion-Perception Plane for Inverse Problems

    Jun 18, 2026Nicolas Zilberstein, Morteza Mardani, Santiago SegarraFlow MatchingFlow Map Learning

    Rice University · NVIDIA Inc.

  7. A Perception vs. Distortion Perspective on Score-Based Generative Channel Estimation

    Jun 15, 2026Marco Skocaj, Lukas Eller, Mate BobanWireless CommunicationsChannel Estimation

    All authors are with the Advanced Wireless Technology Laboratory, Huawei Heisenberg Research Centre, Munich, Germany.

  8. Dual-Constrained Diffusion Image Compression for Operational Rate-Distortion-Perception Optimization

    Jun 11, 2026Sanxin Jiang, Jiro Katto, Heming SunLearned Image CompressionRate-Distortion Optimization

    Department of Information Engineering Shanghai University of Electric Power Shanghai, China · Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering Waseda University Tokyo, Japan · Faculty of Engineering Institute of Science Tokyo Tokyo, Japan

  9. Diffusion Transformer World-Action Model for AV Scene Prediction

    Jun 11, 2026Ruslan Sharifullin, Benjamin Jiang, Kai Xi ChewAction-Conditioned Video GenerationDiffusion Transformer

    Stanford University

  10. Stage-wise Distortion-Perception Traversal in Zero-shot Inverse Problems with Diffusion Models

    May 27, 2026Jiawei Zhang, Ziyuan Liu, Leon Yan +2Bayesian Inverse ProblemsDiffusion-Based Inverse Problems

    Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China.

  11. TriDP-PTM: a three-stage distortion-perception tradeoff guides the pre-training model for radar cardiac sensing

    May 25, 2026Jinye Li, Aidong Men, Yang Liu +1ElectrocardiographyRate-Distortion Optimization

    National Institute of Health Data Science, Peking University, Beijing, China · Institute of Medical Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China · Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China +3

  12. A Synonymous Variational Perspective on the Rate-Distortion-Perception Tradeoff

    Apr 16, 2026Zijian Liang, Kai Niu, Changshuo Wang +2Rate-Distortion TheoryRate-Distortion Optimization

    Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communications, Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China · State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China

  13. Revisiting the Perception-Distortion Trade-off with Spatial-Semantic Guided Super-Resolution

    Mar 14, 2026Dan Wang, Haiyan Sun, Shan Du +4Image Super-ResolutionDistortion-Perception Tradeoff

    University of California, San Diego · University of North Texas · University of British Columbia +1

  14. Rethinking Training Targets, Architectures and Data Quality for Universal Speech Enhancement

    Mar 3, 2026Szu-Wei Fu, Rong Chao, Xuesong Yang +6Speech EnhancementDistortion-Perception Tradeoff

    NVIDIA · Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan