SMSTracker: Tri-path Score Mask Sigma Fusion for Multi-Modal Tracking

Multi-modal object tracking has emerged as a significant research focus in computer vision due to its robustness in complex environments, such as exposure variations, blur, and occlusions. Despite the fact that existing studies integrate supplementary modal information into pre-trained RGB trackers through visual prompt mechanisms, this exhibits a critical limitation: they inherently prioritize RGB information as the dominant modality, thereby underutilizing the complementary information of alternative modal.To address this fundamental limitation, we present SMSTracker, an innovative tri-path score mask sigma fusion framework for multi-modal tracking, including three key modules. Firstly, we design a tri-path Score Mask Fusion (SMF) module to evaluate and quantify the reliability of each modality, allowing optimal exploitation of complementary features between modalities. Secondly, we introduce a pioneering Sigma Interaction (SGI) module to facilitate a sophisticated fusion of modal features across tri-branches, representing the first application of Sigma point-based feature interaction in object tracking tasks. Furthermore, we advance a Drop Key Fine-tuning (DKF) strategy to address the inherent challenge of unequal data contribution in multi-modal learning scenarios, thereby enhancing the model's capacity for comprehensive multi-modal information processing.Finally, extensive experiments on RGB+Thermal, RGB+Depth, and RGB+Event datasets demonstrate the significant performance improvements achieved by SMSTracker over existing state-of-the-art methods. The source code will be available after review.