Token-Efficient VLM: High-Resolution Image Understanding via Dynamic Region Proposal

Abstract

Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at visual understanding by leveraging pretrained image encoders to generate visual tokens. However, they struggle with high-resolution images and zoomed-in regions due to the computational burden and token redundancy of uniform patch-based processing, often leading to the loss of critical details. To address these challenges, we propose Token-Efficient Vision Language Model (TEVA), a novel framework that detects key regions and applies dynamic patch sampling to efficiently capture fine-grained details while preserving global context. Our approach first identifies subject-oriented regions using an adaptive detection strategy. Then, a dynamic patch sampling mechanism selects and arranges patches at varying scales, ensuring efficient processing without increasing token count. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Token-Efficient Vision Language Model (TEVA) significantly enhances VLM performance in handling visual details, seamlessly integrating with various decoders and LLMs.