Image Tokenization

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

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BudgetPix: Compute-Adaptive Tokenization for Pixel-Space Image Diffusion
Oct 8, 2026Ozgur Kara, Yujia Chen, Daniel Watson +4Image Tokenization Diffusion Model Inference Acceleration
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Google
What Makes a Good Medical Image Tokenizer? Rethinking Reconstruction and Generation in Medical Image Tokenization
Sep 21, 2026Niklas Bubeck, Yundi Zhang, Vasiliki Sideri-Lampretsa +4Image Tokenization Medical Image Synthesis
School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning, Technical University of Munich, Germany · School of Medicine, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, Germany +3
Studying Image Tokenizers as Visual Languages in Unified Multimodal Models
Sep 8, 2026Siting Li, Zhengyang Wang, Simon Shaolei Du +2Image Tokenization Unified Multimodal Models
University of Washington · Amazon FAR
Tokenizer-Generator Coupling in Medical Image Generation
Aug 7, 2026Liam ChalcroftImage Tokenization Diffusion Sampling
University College London London, United Kingdom
Pixels for Programs? A Cross-Provider Case Study of Input-Token Accounting for Source Code as Text and Images
Jul 23, 2026Ronak BhalgamiImage Tokenization Token Efficiency
Test-Time Registers as Global Priors for Tokenized Image Generation
Jul 18, 2026Cheng-Yao Hong, Yifan Wang, Yuewei Lin +1Image Tokenization Vision Transformer
Stony Brook University · Brookhaven National Laboratory
SpiralFovea: Input-Adaptive Foveated Tokenization as a Third Lever of Resource-Adaptive Inference
Jul 1, 2026Kyan Mahajan, Mohammad SaqlainImage Tokenization Efficient ViTs
Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
From 2D Grids to 1D Tokens: Reforming Shared Representations for Multimodal Image Fusion
Jun 10, 2026Yuchen Xian, Yunqiu Xu, Yang He +1Multi-Source Image Fusion Image Tokenization
ReLER, The State Key Lab of Brain Machine Intelligence, Zhejiang University · College of Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University · National University of Singapore +2
IDEAL: In-DEpth ALignment Makes A Discrete Representation AutoEncoder
Jun 9, 2026Yitong Chen, Zijie Diao, Junke Wang +5Visual Representation Learning Image Tokenization
Institute of Trustworthy Embodied AI, Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · University of Maryland, College Park
AdaTok: Self-Budgeting Image Tokenization with Quality-Preserving Dynamic Tokens
Jun 5, 2026Xiaocheng Lu, Yuxi Chen, Jie Zhang +5Image Tokenization Visual Tokenization
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Balancing Image Compression and Generation with Bootstrapped Tokenization
Jun 4, 2026Haozhe Chi, Jinghan Li, Hao Jiang +4Learned Image Compression Image Tokenization
1Peking University · 2Central Media Technology Institute, Huawei
ChannelTok: Efficient Flexible-Length Vision Tokenization
Jun 3, 2026Sukriti Paul, Arpit Bansal, Tom GoldsteinImage Tokenization Visual Tokenization
University of Maryland, College Park
Diffusing in the Right Space: A Systematic Study of Latent Diffusability
Jun 2, 2026Tianxiong Zhong, Xingye Tian, Xuebo Wang +2Latent Diffusion Models Image Tokenization
Kling Team, Kuaishou Technology
Unified Driving Tokens: Representation- and Geometry-Guided Discrete Tokenizer for Driving World Models and Planning
Jun 1, 2026Ziyang Yao, Zeyu Zhu, YunCheng Jiang +2Image Tokenization World Models
Peking University · Xiaomi EV
Residual Decoder Adapter: ID-Preserving Tokenizer Adaption for Autoregressive Text Rendering
Jun 1, 2026Dongxing Mao, Jinpeng Wang, Jiahao Tang +6Image Tokenization Visual Tokenization
Central South University · University of Oxford · Microsoft Research
HiTokSR: A Coarse-to-Fine Tokenizer with Hierarchical Codebooks for High-Fidelity Real-World Image Super-Resolution
May 31, 2026Mingxi LiImage Tokenization Vector Quantization
MergeTok: Unified Continuous and Discrete Visual Tokenization via Token Merging
May 29, 2026Luyuan Zhang, Siyuan Li, Zedong Wang +7Variational Autoencoders Token Merging
1Tsinghua University · 2Westlake University · 3Zhejiang University +3
PARCEL: Pool-Anchored Resampling with Conditioned Elastic Queries for Efficient Vision-Language Understanding
May 28, 2026Selim Kuzucu, Alessio Tonioni, Vasile Lup +3Image Tokenization Efficient VLM Inference
Max Planck Institute for Informatics, SIC · Google · Technical University of Munich
Structure over Pixels: Learning Variable-Length Visual Programs
May 26, 2026Piotr Wyrwiński, Kacper Dobek, Krzysztof KrawiecVisual Representation Learning Image Tokenization
Institute of Computing Science Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland
Channel-wise Vector Quantization
May 25, 2026Wei Song, Tianhang Wang, Yitong Chen +5Image Tokenization Visual Tokenization
Shanghai Innovation Institute · Westlake University · Zhejiang University +2
Vision Foundation Models as Generalist Tokenizers for Image Generation
May 18, 2026Anlin Zheng, Qi Han, Xin Wen +5Vision Foundation Models Image Tokenization
University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong · StepFun
WinTok: A Win-Win Hybrid Tokenizer via Decomposing Visual Understanding and Generation with Transferable Tokens
May 18, 2026Yiwei Guo, Shaobin Zhuang, Zhipeng Huang +4Image Tokenization Unified Multimodal Models
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences · WeChat Vision, Tencent Inc. · Shanghai Jiao Tong University
A More Word-like Image Tokenization for MLLMs
May 18, 2026Hyun Lee, Hyemin Jeong, Yejin Kim +4Image Tokenization Efficient VLM Inference
Seoul National University · Ewha Womans University
Hierarchical Image Tokenization for Multi-Scale Image Super Resolution
May 14, 2026Isma Hadji, Enrique Sanchez, Adrian Bulat +2Image Tokenization Visual Autoregressive Models
Samsung AI Center Cambridge, UK · Technical University of Iasi, Romania · Queen Mary University of London, UK
InsightTok: Improving Text and Face Fidelity in Discrete Tokenization for Autoregressive Image Generation
May 14, 2026Yang Yue, Fangyun Wei, Tianyu He +10Image Tokenization Image Generation
Tsinghua University · Microsoft Research
Unified Pix Token And Word Token Generative Language Model
May 13, 2026Haun Leung, ZiNan WangImage Tokenization Self-Supervised Pre-Training
Spectral Vision Transformer for Efficient Tokenization with Limited Data
May 12, 2026Alexandra G. Roberts, Maneesh John, Jinwei Zhang +10Medical Imaging Image Tokenization
Mutual Enhancement Between Global Tokens and Patch Tokens: From Theory to Practice
May 11, 2026Xiusheng Huang, Xin Jiang, Jun Zhao +2Learned Image Compression Image Tokenization
The Key Laboratory of Cognition and Decision Intelligence for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence
Learning Discrete Autoregressive Priors with Wasserstein Gradient Flow
May 7, 2026Bowen Zheng, Yihong Luo, Tianyang HuImage Tokenization Visual Tokenization
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
MUSE: Resolving Manifold Misalignment in Visual Tokenization via Topological Orthogonality
May 7, 2026Panqi Yang, Haodong Jing, Jiahao Chao +5Visual Representation Learning Image Tokenization
State Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Hybrid Augmented Intelligence,National Engineering Research Center of Visual Information and Applications,and Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi’an Jiao Tong University · Xiaohongshu Inc.

Oct 8, 2026, cs.CVJ/K move · Enter open · S save

BudgetPix: Compute-Adaptive Tokenization for Pixel-Space Image Diffusion

Ozgur Kara, Yujia Chen, Daniel Watson, David Forsyth+3

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Google

Image Tokenization Diffusion Model Inference Acceleration Pixel-Space Diffusion Models T2I Generation

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Most image generation models rely on uniform tokenization, allocating the exact same computational budget to equally-sized image patches. This static paradigm cannot adapt to different resource constraints at inference time, and yields suboptimal quality-cost tradeoff by devoting the same effort to both plain backgrounds and intricate details. We propose BudgetPix, an adaptive tokenization framework that dynamically allocates compute based on visual complexity and spatial layout, enabling flexible computational budgeting at inference time. BudgetPix comprises three key components: (1) an adaptive encoder that maps a fixed-size image to a variable-length token sequence using an entropy-guided quadtree alongside a multi-scale patch embedder; (2) a scale-aware decoder reconstructs fixed-resolution images from multi-scale token sets; and (3) a flexible training and sampling schedule that enables pixel-space denoisers to operate across variable token counts. BudgetPix seamlessly integrates with existing pixel-space diffusion architectures, enabling a single checkpoint to be operated at a wide range of compute budgets. Evaluated on text-to-image generation, BudgetPix matches the fidelity of MiniT2I-L at

512^2

and PixelDiT at

1024^2

using just 25% of the original compute budget. In class-conditional generation using a MeanFlow backbone, BudgetPix requires merely 60% of the full compute budget to produce images with near-zero quality degradation, observing a marginal 0.8-point increase in FID. Comprehensive assessments by human and VLM judges confirm that BudgetPix establishes a significantly improved quality-efficiency tradeoff over prior budget-adaptive baselines. More details are available at our project page: https://karaozgur.com/BudgetPix

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Latest papers 38