# Vision Tiny Recursion Model (ViTRM): Parameter-Efficient Image Classification via Recursive State Refinement Source: [Vision Tiny Recursion Model (ViTRM): Parameter-Efficient Image Classification via Recursive State Refinement]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2026-04-03T05:00:12.986Z Authors: Ange-Cl\\'ement Akazan, Abdoulaye Koroko, Verlon Roel Mbingui, Choukouriyah Arinloye, Hassan Fifen, Rose Bandolo Published: 2026-03-19T22:15:23.000Z ## Abstract The success of deep learning in computer vision has been driven by models of increasing scale, from deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to large Vision Transformers (ViT). While effective, these architectures are parameter-intensive and demand significant computational resources, limiting deployment in resource-constrained environments. Inspired by Tiny Recursive Models (TRM), which show that small recursive networks can solve complex reasoning tasks through iterative state refinement, we introduce the \\textbf{Vision Tiny Recursion Model (ViTRM)}: a parameter-efficient architecture that replaces the $L$-layer ViT encoder with a single tiny $k$-layer block ($k{=}3$) applied recursively $N$ times. Despite using up to $6 \\times $ and $84 \\times$ fewer parameters than CNN based models and ViT respectively, ViTRM maintains competitive performance on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100. This demonstrates that recursive computation is a viable, parameter-efficient alternative to architectural depth in vision. ## 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. - [Image Classification on CIFAR-10 (test) (Top-1 Accuracy vs Batch Size)](): Image Classification; CIFAR-10 (test); Top-1 Accuracy (BS=64): 92.6. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()