# Rethinking Sparse Lexical Representations for Image Retrieval in the Age of Rising Multi-Modal Large Language Models Source: [Rethinking Sparse Lexical Representations for Image Retrieval in the Age of Rising Multi-Modal Large Language Models]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-26T03:13:35.838Z Authors: Kengo Nakata, Daisuke Miyashita, Youyang Ng, Yasuto Hoshi, Jun Deguchi Published: 2024-08-29T06:54:03.000Z ## Abstract In this paper, we rethink sparse lexical representations for image retrieval. By utilizing multi-modal large language models (M-LLMs) that support visual prompting, we can extract image features and convert them into textual data, enabling us to utilize efficient sparse retrieval algorithms employed in natural language processing for image retrieval tasks. To assist the LLM in extracting image features, we apply data augmentation techniques for key expansion and analyze the impact with a metric for relevance between images and textual data. We empirically show the superior precision and recall performance of our image retrieval method compared to conventional vision-language model-based methods on the MS-COCO, PASCAL VOC, and NUS-WIDE datasets in a keyword-based image retrieval scenario, where keywords serve as search queries. We also demonstrate that the retrieval performance can be improved by iteratively incorporating keywords into search queries. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()