---
license: mit
library_name: transformers
pipeline_tag: image-text-to-text
tags:
- image-quality-assessment
- iqa
- mr-iqa
---

# MR-IQA: A Unified Margin View of Regression and Ranking for Blind Image Quality Assessment

<p align="center">
  <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.29760">arXiv</a> |
  <a href="https://github.com/RobinY99/MR-IQA">GitHub</a>
</p>

<p align="center">
  <a href="https://github.com/RobinY99/MR-IQA/blob/main/assets/mr_iqa_overview.pdf">
    <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RobinY99/MR-IQA/main/assets/mr_iqa_overview.png" alt="MR-IQA unified margin view and training pipeline" width="96%">
  </a>
</p>

We derive that regression and ranking are approximately equivalent under a unified margin view. Based on this observation, we propose MR-IQA for margin learning in blind image quality assessment.


## Validation Snapshot

The released checkpoint was validated after each epoch with an 8-shard setup on a held-out KONIQ split.

| Epoch | Valid samples | SRCC | PLCC | Shards |
| ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| 1 | 200 | 0.8840 | 0.8894 | 8 |
| 2 | 200 | 0.9213 | 0.9302 | 8 |
| 3 | 200 | 0.9318 | 0.9392 | 8 |
| 4 | 200 | 0.9274 | 0.9340 | 8 |
| 5 | 200 | 0.9271 | 0.9409 | 8 |
| 6 | 200 | 0.9249 | 0.9406 | 8 |
| 7 | 200 | 0.9205 | 0.9408 | 8 |
| 8 | 200 | 0.9288 | 0.9465 | 8 |
| 9 | 200 | 0.9307 | 0.9450 | 8 |
| 10 | 200 | 0.9251 | 0.9421 | 8 |

Best SRCC was reached at epoch 3. The final released checkpoint corresponds to epoch 10. Sanitized training metadata is available in [`training_guidance/`](training_guidance/).

## Quick Start

Load the model with a standard Transformers vision-language workflow. The training and evaluation code use a no-reasoning prompt and parse the final numeric score from `<answer>...</answer>`.

System prompt:

```text
You are an image quality assessment assistant. Output only the final score in <answer> </answer> tags.
```

User prompt:

```text
What is your overall rating on the quality of this picture? The rating should be a float between 1 and 5, rounded to two decimal places, with 1 representing very poor quality and 5 representing excellent quality. Please only output the final answer with one score in <answer> </answer> tags.
```

## Output Format

The expected response is only one score in answer tags:

```text
<answer>3.74</answer>
```

The evaluation parser first reads the number inside `<answer>...</answer>` and clamps valid scores to the 1 to 5 range.

## Citation

```bibtex
@misc{li2026mriqaunifiedmarginview,
  title={MR-IQA: A Unified Margin View of Regression and Ranking for Blind Image Quality Assessment},
  author={Yuan Li and Youyuan Lin and Zitang Sun and Yung-Hao Yang and Kiyofumi Miyoshi and Chenhui Chu and Shin'ya Nishida},
  year={2026},
  eprint={2606.29760},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.CV},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.29760}
}
```