Abstract
Infrared and visible (IR-VIS) image fusion integrates complementary multimodal information into a single fused image to support downstream vision tasks. However, existing methods are typically tailored to seen tasks within a fixed task set and struggle to generalize to unseen tasks, which restricts their applicability in real-world open-task scenarios. To address this issue, this paper proposes CRT-HMAR, a Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation Framework for open-task-aware IR-VIS image fusion. CRT-HMAR introduces a Causal Requirement Tracing Task Localization mechanism, which actively intervenes in key image information and observes task-network response variations to map task-specific semantic preferences into image-level causal requirement maps. Based on these maps, a requirement analysis agent aggregates task-specific requirement knowledge to adaptively guide requirement-customized image fusion. Moreover, CRT-HMAR incorporates History-Analysis Multi-Objective Balancing and Task-Level-Correction Conflict Mitigation mechanisms, jointly constructing a hierarchical regulation chain of "requirement interpretation - task balancing - conflict mitigation". Through multiple collaborative agents, CRT-HMAR dynamically regulates key processes including open-task requirement modeling, multi-task balanced optimization, and gradient conflict mitigation. Extensive experiments on open-task scenarios involving five downstream tasks demonstrate that CRT-HMAR significantly improves generalization to unseen tasks while maintaining the performance and balance of seen tasks. Overall, CRT-HMAR shifts IR-VIS image fusion from task-oriented modeling toward requirement-oriented modeling, promoting its extension from closed-task settings to real-world open-task scenarios.
Keywords
Publication details
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Cite this article
APA 7
Yang, Z., Yuan, S., Wu, Z. C., Cheng, J., Li, H., & Liu, Y. (2026). CRT-HMAR: Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation for Open-Task-Aware Infrared-Visible Image Fusion. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/crt-hmar-causal-requirement-tracing-guided-hierarchical-multi-agent-regulation-for-open-task-aware-infrared-visible-image-fusion
MLA 9
Yang, Zengyi, et al. "CRT-HMAR: Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation for Open-Task-Aware Infrared-Visible Image Fusion." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/crt-hmar-causal-requirement-tracing-guided-hierarchical-multi-agent-regulation-for-open-task-aware-infrared-visible-image-fusion.
Chicago (author–date)
Yang, Zengyi, Shuai Yuan, Zhong-Cheng Wu, Juan Cheng, Huafeng Li, and Yu Liu. 2026. "CRT-HMAR: Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation for Open-Task-Aware Infrared-Visible Image Fusion." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/crt-hmar-causal-requirement-tracing-guided-hierarchical-multi-agent-regulation-for-open-task-aware-infrared-visible-image-fusion.
Harvard
Yang, Z., Yuan, S., Wu, Z. C., Cheng, J., Li, H. and Liu, Y. (2026) 'CRT-HMAR: Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation for Open-Task-Aware Infrared-Visible Image Fusion', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/crt-hmar-causal-requirement-tracing-guided-hierarchical-multi-agent-regulation-for-open-task-aware-infrared-visible-image-fusion.
Vancouver
Yang Z, Yuan S, Wu ZC, Cheng J, Li H, Liu Y. CRT-HMAR: Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation for Open-Task-Aware Infrared-Visible Image Fusion. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/crt-hmar-causal-requirement-tracing-guided-hierarchical-multi-agent-regulation-for-open-task-aware-infrared-visible-image-fusion
IEEE
Z. Yang, S. Yuan, Z. C. Wu, J. Cheng, H. Li, and Y. Liu, "CRT-HMAR: Causal Requirement Tracing-Guided Hierarchical Multi-Agent Regulation for Open-Task-Aware Infrared-Visible Image Fusion," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/crt-hmar-causal-requirement-tracing-guided-hierarchical-multi-agent-regulation-for-open-task-aware-infrared-visible-image-fusion.