# Visual Model Checking: Graph-Based Inference of Visual Routines for Image Retrieval Source: [Visual Model Checking: Graph-Based Inference of Visual Routines for Image Retrieval]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2026-02-21T05:00:04.173Z Authors: Adri\\\`a Molina, Oriol Ramos Terrades, Josep Llad\\'os Published: 2026-02-19T14:10:55.000Z ## Abstract Information retrieval lies at the foundation of the modern digital industry. While natural language search has seen dramatic progress in recent years largely driven by embedding-based models and large-scale pretraining, the field still faces significant challenges. Specifically, queries that involve complex relationships, object compositions, or precise constraints such as identities, counts and proportions often remain unresolved or unreliable within current frameworks. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that integrates formal verification into deep learning-based image retrieval through a synergistic combination of graph-based verification methods and neural code generation. Our approach aims to support open-vocabulary natural language queries while producing results that are both trustworthy and verifiable. By grounding retrieval results in a system of formal reasoning, we move beyond the ambiguity and approximation that often characterize vector representations. Instead of accepting uncertainty as a given, our framework explicitly verifies each atomic truth in the user query against the retrieved content. This allows us to not only return matching results, but also to identify and mark which specific constraints are satisfied and which remain unmet, thereby offering a more transparent and accountable retrieval process while boosting the results of the most popular embedding-based approaches. ## 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. - [Text-to-Image Retrieval on MS-COCO Combined](): Text-to-Image Retrieval; MS-COCO Combined; R@1: 68.9. - [Text-to-Image Retrieval on MS-COCO (Hard)](): Text-to-Image Retrieval; MS-COCO (Hard); Recall@1: 39.1. - [Text-to-Image Retrieval on MS-COCO Easy](): Text-to-Image Retrieval; MS-COCO Easy; Recall@1: 0.592. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()