# DDPM-CD: Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models as Feature Extractors for Change Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.11892 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11892/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 52 of its 111 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2022.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Improved Baselines with Momentum Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04297/) (2020)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [VideoMAE: Masked Autoencoders are Data-Efficient Learners for Self-Supervised Video Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12602/) (2022)
- [SimMIM: A Simple Framework for Masked Image Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09886/) (2021)
- [Colorful Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08511/) (2016)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07035/) (2017)
- [Dense Contrastive Learning for Self-Supervised Visual Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09157/) (2020)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [Tutorial on Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05908/) (2016)
- [Functional Map of the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07846/) (2017)
- [Fully Convolutional Siamese Networks for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.08462/) (2018)
- [Remote Sensing Image Change Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00208/) (2021)
- [Deblurring via Stochastic Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02475/) (2021)
- [A Transformer-Based Siamese Network for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01293/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Vision-Language Modeling Meets Remote Sensing: Models, Datasets and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14361/) (2025)
- [A Mamba-based Siamese Network for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06839/) (2024)
- [Mask Approximation Net: A Novel Diffusion Model Approach for Remote Sensing Change Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19179/) (2024)
- [Can Generative Geospatial Diffusion Models Excel as Discriminative Geospatial Foundation Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07890/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Sample-Efficient Deep Learning for Change Detection in Remote Sensing: Tasks, Strategies, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02835/) (2025)
- [CrossDiff: Exploring Self-Supervised Representation of Pansharpening via Cross-Predictive Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05153/) (2024)
- [Referring Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11719/) (2025)
- [NeXt2Former-CD: Efficient Remote Sensing Change Detection with Modern Vision Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18717/) (2026)
- [Diffusion Models for Hyperspectral Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11158/) (2025)
- [Language-Informed Hyperspectral Image Synthesis for Imbalanced-Small Sample Classification via Semi-Supervised Conditional Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19700/) (2025)
- [UniDiff: Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of Diffusion Models for Land Cover Classification with Multi-Modal Remotely Sensed Imagery and Sparse Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00261/) (2025)
- [Label-Efficient Hyperspectral Image Classification via Spectral FiLM Modulation of Low-Level Pretrained Diffusion Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03430/) (2025)
- [RemoteVAR: Autoregressive Visual Modeling for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11898/) (2026)
- [COP-GEN: Latent Diffusion Transformer for Copernicus Earth Observation Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03239/) (2026)
- [SGDFuse: SAM-Guided Diffusion Model for High-Fidelity Infrared and Visible Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05264/) (2025)
- [FAF-CD: Frequency-Aware Fusion for Change Detection under Imperfect Multimodal Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03114/) (2026)
- [JL1-CC&QA: Extending the JL1-CD Benchmark with Change Captioning and Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31745/) (2026)
- [Hyperspectral Diffusion Equivariant Imaging (HyDiff-EI): A Self-supervised Framework for Hyperspectral Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26812/) (2026)
- [Temporally Ordered Region-Token Mamba with Logit-Space Diffusion for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27149/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Remote sensing change detection is crucial for understanding the dynamics of our planet's surface, facilitating the monitoring of environmental changes, evaluating human impact, predicting future trends, and supporting decision-making. In this work, we introduce a novel approach for change detection that can leverage off-the-shelf, unlabeled remote sensing images in the training process by pre-training a Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) - a class of generative models used in image synthesis. DDPMs learn the training data distribution by gradually converting training images into a Gaussian distribution using a Markov chain. During inference (i.e., sampling), they can generate a diverse set of samples closer to the training distribution, starting from Gaussian noise, achieving state-of-the-art image synthesis results. However, in this work, our focus is not on image synthesis but on utilizing it as a pre-trained feature extractor for the downstream application of change detection. Specifically, we fine-tune a lightweight change classifier utilizing the feature representations produced by the pre-trained DDPM alongside change labels. Experiments conducted on the LEVIR-CD, WHU-CD, DSIFN-CD, and CDD datasets demonstrate that the proposed DDPM-CD method significantly outperforms the existing state-of-the-art change detection methods in terms of F1 score, IoU, and overall accuracy, highlighting the pivotal role of pre-trained DDPM as a feature extractor for downstream applications. We have made both the code and pre-trained models available at https://github.com/wgcban/ddpm-cd