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arXiv · 2505.01457

A Multi-Granularity Retrieval Framework for Visually-Rich Documents

Mingjun Xu·Zehui Wang·Hengxing Cai·Renxin Zhong
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Abstract

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems have predominantly focused on text-based retrieval, limiting their effectiveness in handling visually-rich documents that encompass text, images, tables, and charts. To bridge this gap, we propose a unified multi-granularity multimodal retrieval framework tailored for two benchmark tasks: MMDocIR and M2KR. Our approach integrates hierarchical encoding strategies, modality-aware retrieval mechanisms, and vision-language model (VLM)-based candidate filtering to effectively capture and utilize the complex interdependencies between textual and visual modalities. By leveraging off-the-shelf vision-language models and implementing a training-free hybrid retrieval strategy, our framework demonstrates robust performance without the need for task-specific fine-tuning. Experimental evaluations reveal that incorporating layout-aware search and VLM-based candidate verification significantly enhances retrieval accuracy, achieving a top performance score of 65.56. This work underscores the potential of scalable and reproducible solutions in advancing multimodal document retrieval systems.

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Mingjun Xu, Zehui Wang, Hengxing Cai, Renxin Zhong. 2025-05-01. A Multi-Granularity Retrieval Framework for Visually-Rich Documents. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01457

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