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CMRAG: Co-modality-based visual document retrieval and question answering

Wang Chen, Wenhan Yu, Guanqiang Qi, Weikang Li, Yang Li, Lei Sha, Deguo Xia, Jizhou Huang · Sep 2, 2025 · Citations: 0

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How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks. However, existing methods have limitations when dealing with multimodal documents: one category of methods relies on layout analysis and text extraction, which can only utilize explicit text information and struggle to capture images or unstructured content; the other category treats document segmentation as visual input and directly passes it to visual language models (VLMs) for processing, yet it ignores the semantic advantages of text, leading to suboptimal retrieval and generation results. To address these research gaps, we propose the Co-Modality-based RAG (CMRAG) framework, which can simultaneously leverage texts and images for more accurate retrieval and generation. Our framework includes two key components: (1) a Unified Encoding Model (UEM) that projects queries, parsed text, and images into a shared embedding space via triplet-based training, and (2) a Unified Co-Modality-informed Retrieval (UCMR) method that statistically normalizes similarity scores to effectively fuse cross-modal signals. To support research in this direction, we further construct and release a large-scale triplet dataset of (query, text, image) examples. Experiments demonstrate that our proposed framework consistently outperforms single-modality--based RAG in multiple visual document question-answering (VDQA) benchmarks. The findings of this paper show that integrating co-modality information into the RAG framework in a unified manner is an effective approach to improving the performance of complex VDQA systems.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
  • The abstract does not clearly describe the evaluation setup.
  • The abstract does not clearly name benchmarks or metrics.
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Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

Background context only.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 15%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

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What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks."

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Not reported
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes:
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a core paradigm in document question answering tasks.
  • However, existing methods have limitations when dealing with multimodal documents: one category of methods relies on layout analysis and text extraction, which can only utilize explicit text information and struggle to capture images or unstructured content; the other category treats document segmentation as visual input and directly passes it to visual language models (VLMs) for processing, yet it ignores the semantic advantages of text, leading to suboptimal retrieval and generation results.
  • To address these research gaps, we propose the Co-Modality-based RAG (CMRAG) framework, which can simultaneously leverage texts and images for more accurate retrieval and generation.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • To address these research gaps, we propose the Co-Modality-based RAG (CMRAG) framework, which can simultaneously leverage texts and images for more accurate retrieval and generation.
  • Experiments demonstrate that our proposed framework consistently outperforms single-modality--based RAG in multiple visual document question-answering (VDQA) benchmarks.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Experiments demonstrate that our proposed framework consistently outperforms single-modality--based RAG in multiple visual document question-answering (VDQA) benchmarks.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Gap: Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Gap: Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.

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