• Author(s): Yaoting Wang, Peiwen Sun, Dongzhan Zhou, Guangyao Li, Honggang Zhang, Di Hu

“Ref-AVS: Refer and Segment Objects in Audio-Visual Scenes” introduces a novel task called Reference Audio-Visual Segmentation (Ref-AVS), which focuses on segmenting objects within visual scenes based on audio cues and textual references. This research addresses the challenge of integrating audio-visual information with natural language processing to enhance object segmentation, a critical task for applications in multimedia content analysis, augmented reality, and interactive AI systems.

Ref-AVS combines audio-visual segmentation (AVS) with referring expression segmentation (RES), creating a more comprehensive framework that leverages both audio and textual information to identify and segment objects. The task involves three key components: understanding the audio cues to locate sound-producing objects, interpreting textual references to identify specific objects of interest, and segmenting these objects within the visual scene. The core innovation of Ref-AVS lies in its ability to fuse audio, visual, and textual data to achieve precise object segmentation. The framework employs a multi-modal approach that integrates audio-visual features with natural language processing. This integration allows the model to understand and process complex scenes where objects are identified not only by their appearance but also by their sounds and descriptive references.

The paper provides extensive experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of Ref-AVS. The authors evaluate their approach on several benchmark datasets, including newly created datasets specifically designed for this task. These datasets contain diverse scenes with various objects, sounds, and textual descriptions, providing a robust foundation for testing the model’s capabilities. The results show that Ref-AVS significantly outperforms existing methods in terms of segmentation accuracy and robustness, particularly in complex scenes with multiple sound sources and ambiguous textual references.

Additionally, the paper includes qualitative examples that highlight the practical applications of Ref-AVS. These examples illustrate how the framework can be used in real-world scenarios, such as video content analysis, where identifying and segmenting objects based on audio cues and textual descriptions is essential. The ability to accurately segment objects in audio-visual scenes makes Ref-AVS a valuable tool for enhancing the capabilities of multimedia content analysis and interactive AI systems. “Ref-AVS: Refer and Segment Objects in Audio-Visual Scenes” presents a significant advancement in the field of audio-visual segmentation. By integrating audio, visual, and textual information, the authors offer a powerful framework for precise object segmentation in complex scenes. This research has important implications for various applications, making it easier to develop advanced AI systems that can understand and interact with multimedia content in a more nuanced and effective manner.