# A Comprehensive Survey of Image Augmentation Techniques for Deep Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01491 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01491/

## Key facts

- Cited by 97 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 80 of its 116 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 May 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 80)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [mixup: Beyond Empirical Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.09412/) (2017)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [Bootstrap your own latent: A new approach to self-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07733/) (2020)
- [Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12877/) (2020)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [CutMix: Regularization Strategy to Train Strong Classifiers with Localizable Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04899/) (2019)
- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [Understanding deep learning requires rethinking generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03530/) (2016)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [Improved Regularization of Convolutional Neural Networks with Cutout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04552/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning by Predicting Image Rotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07728/) (2018)
- [ImageNet-trained CNNs are biased towards texture; increasing shape bias improves accuracy and robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12231/) (2018)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [Random Erasing Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04896/) (2017)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.07012/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning by Context Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05192/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 97)

- [A Survey of Multimodal Large Language Model from A Data-centric Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16640/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Robotics with Foundation Models: toward Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02385/) (2024)
- [MetaEarth: A Generative Foundation Model for Global-Scale Remote Sensing Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13570/) (2024)
- [How Much Data Are Augmentations Worth? An Investigation into Scaling Laws, Invariance, and Implicit Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06441/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning for Cross-Domain Data Fusion in Urban Computing: Taxonomy, Advances, and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19348/) (2024)
- [Image Data Augmentation Approaches: A Comprehensive Survey and Future directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02830/) (2023)
- [Towards long-tailed, multi-label disease classification from chest X-ray: Overview of the CXR-LT challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16112/) (2023)
- [Boosting Adversarial Transferability across Model Genus by Deformation-Constrained Warping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03951/) (2024)
- [Label-Efficient Learning in Agriculture: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14691/) (2023)
- [Data-free Knowledge Distillation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00870/) (2025)
- [Touch begins where vision ends: Generalizable policies for contact-rich manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13762/) (2025)
- [Understanding the Detrimental Class-level Effects of Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01764/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Defenses Against AI-Generated Visual Media: Detection,Disruption, and Authentication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10575/) (2024)
- [Relaxed Equivariance via Multitask Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17878/) (2024)
- [CXR-LT 2024: A MICCAI challenge on long-tailed, multi-label, and zero-shot disease classification from chest X-ray](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07984/) (2025)
- [A Unified Multimodal De- and Re-coupling Framework for RGB-D Motion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09146/) (2022)
- [A Holistic Assessment of the Reliability of Machine Learning Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10586/) (2023)
- [A Survey of the Self Supervised Learning Mechanisms for Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.17059/) (2024)
- [FairDgcl: Fairness-aware Recommendation with Dynamic Graph Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17555/) (2024)
- [DiffAug: Enhance Unsupervised Contrastive Learning with Domain-Knowledge-Free Diffusion-based Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07909/) (2023)
- [AdaAugment: A Tuning-Free and Adaptive Approach to Enhance Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11467/) (2024)
- [From Easy to Hard: Building a Shortcut for Differentially Private Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01395/) (2025)
- [Deep Data Augmentation for Weed Recognition Enhancement: A Diffusion Probabilistic Model and Transfer Learning Based Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09509/) (2022)
- [When Dynamic Data Selection Meets Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03809/) (2025)
- [Understanding the Tricks of Deep Learning in Medical Image Segmentation: Challenges and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10307/) (2022)
- [Synthetic Image Learning: Preserving Performance and Preventing Membership Inference Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15526/) (2024)
- [Embrace Limited and Imperfect Training Datasets: Opportunities and Challenges in Plant Disease Recognition Using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11533/) (2023)
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- [S3Simulator: A benchmarking Side Scan Sonar Simulator dataset for Underwater Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12833/) (2024)
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## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning has been achieving decent performance in computer vision requiring a large volume of images, however, collecting images is expensive and difficult in many scenarios. To alleviate this issue, many image augmentation algorithms have been proposed as effective and efficient strategies. Understanding current algorithms is essential to find suitable methods or develop novel techniques for given tasks. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive survey on image augmentation for deep learning with a novel informative taxonomy. To get the basic idea why we need image augmentation, we introduce the challenges in computer vision tasks and vicinity distribution. Then, the algorithms are split into three categories; model-free, model-based, and optimizing policy-based. The model-free category employs image processing methods while the model-based method leverages trainable image generation models. In contrast, the optimizing policy-based approach aims to find the optimal operations or their combinations. Furthermore, we discuss the current trend of common applications with two more active topics, leveraging different ways to understand image augmentation, such as group and kernel theory, and deploying image augmentation for unsupervised learning. Based on the analysis, we believe that our survey gives a better understanding helpful to choose suitable methods or design novel algorithms for practical applications.