# Deep Learning for Unsupervised Anomaly Localization in Industrial Images: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.10298 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10298/

## Key facts

- Cited by 68 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 63 of its 125 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 63)

- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Exploring Simple Siamese Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10566/) (2020)
- [Variational Inference with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05770/) (2015)
- [Towards Total Recall in Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08265/) (2021)
- [PaDiM: a Patch Distribution Modeling Framework for Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08785/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Generative Adversarial Networks to Guide Marker Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05921/) (2017)
- [Memorizing Normality to Detect Anomaly: Memory-augmented Deep Autoencoder for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02639/) (2019)
- [CutPaste: Self-Supervised Learning for Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04015/) (2021)
- [DRAEM -- A discriminatively trained reconstruction embedding for surface anomaly detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07610/) (2021)
- [A Unifying Review of Deep and Shallow Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11732/) (2020)
- [GANomaly: Semi-Supervised Anomaly Detection via Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06725/) (2018)
- [Uninformed Students: Student-Teacher Anomaly Detection with Discriminative Latent Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02357/) (2019)
- [Deep Learning for Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.03407/) (2019)
- [CFLOW-AD: Real-Time Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Localization via Conditional Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12571/) (2021)
- [Sub-Image Anomaly Detection with Deep Pyramid Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02357/) (2020)
- [Multiresolution Knowledge Distillation for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11108/) (2020)
- [Improving Unsupervised Defect Segmentation by Applying Structural Similarity to Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02011/) (2018)
- [FastFlow: Unsupervised Anomaly Detection and Localization via 2D Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07677/) (2021)
- [VT-ADL: A Vision Transformer Network for Image Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10036/) (2021)
- [Patch SVDD: Patch-level SVDD for Anomaly Detection and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16067/) (2020)
- [Same Same But DifferNet: Semi-Supervised Defect Detection with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12577/) (2020)
- [The MVTec 3D-AD Dataset for Unsupervised 3D Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09045/) (2021)
- [Deep Autoencoding Models for Unsupervised Anomaly Segmentation in Brain MR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04488/) (2018)
- [Student-Teacher Feature Pyramid Matching for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04257/) (2021)
- [Segmentation-Based Deep-Learning Approach for Surface-Defect Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08536/) (2019)
- [Explainable Deep One-Class Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01760/) (2020)
- [Self-Supervised Predictive Convolutional Attentive Block for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09099/) (2021)
- [Fully Convolutional Cross-Scale-Flows for Image-based Defect Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02855/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 68)

- [Deep Industrial Image Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11514/) (2023)
- [Real3D-AD: A Dataset of Point Cloud Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13226/) (2023)
- [PyramidFlow: High-Resolution Defect Contrastive Localization using Pyramid Normalizing Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02595/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Visual Anomaly Detection: Challenge, Approach, and Prospect](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16402/) (2024)
- [IM-IAD: Industrial Image Anomaly Detection Benchmark in Manufacturing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13359/) (2023)
- [Prototypical Residual Networks for Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02031/) (2022)
- [SoftPatch: Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Noisy Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14233/) (2024)
- [VCP-CLIP: A visual context prompting model for zero-shot anomaly segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12276/) (2024)
- [DiffusionAD: Norm-guided One-step Denoising Diffusion for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08730/) (2023)
- [DiAD: A Diffusion-based Framework for Multi-class Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06607/) (2023)
- [Focus the Discrepancy: Intra- and Inter-Correlation Learning for Image Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02983/) (2023)
- [Bayesian Prompt Flow Learning for Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10080/) (2025)
- [Industrial Anomaly Detection with Domain Shift: A Real-world Dataset and Masked Multi-scale Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02216/) (2023)
- [Reconstruction from edge image combined with color and gradient difference for industrial surface anomaly detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14485/) (2022)
- [FAPM: Fast Adaptive Patch Memory for Real-time Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07381/) (2022)
- [LafitE: Latent Diffusion Model with Feature Editing for Unsupervised Multi-class Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08059/) (2023)
- [Taming Anomalies with Down-Up Sampling Networks: Group Center Preserving Reconstruction for 3D Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03903/) (2025)
- [REB: Reducing Biases in Representation for Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12577/) (2023)
- [Learning Multi-view Anomaly Detection with Efficient Adaptive Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11935/) (2024)
- [High-Fidelity Zero-Shot Texture Anomaly Localization Using Feature Correspondence Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06433/) (2023)
- [Statistical Test for Anomaly Detections by Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03724/) (2024)
- [A SAM-guided Two-stream Lightweight Model for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19145/) (2024)
- [ToCoAD: Two-Stage Contrastive Learning for Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01312/) (2024)
- [Incomplete Multimodal Industrial Anomaly Detection via Cross-Modal Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13571/) (2024)
- [ADPS: Asymmetric Distillation Post-Segmentation for Image Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10495/) (2022)
- [Blind Localization and Clustering of Anomalies in Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12246/) (2024)
- [Brain-Inspired Spiking Neural Networks for Industrial Fault Diagnosis: A Survey, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02429/) (2023)
- [Examining the Source of Defects from a Mechanical Perspective for 3D Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05901/) (2025)
- [IPAD: Industrial Process Anomaly Detection Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15033/) (2024)
- [Synth4Seg -- Learning Defect Data Synthesis for Defect Segmentation using Bi-level Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18490/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Currently, deep learning-based visual inspection has been highly successful with the help of supervised learning methods. However, in real industrial scenarios, the scarcity of defect samples, the cost of annotation, and the lack of a priori knowledge of defects may render supervised-based methods ineffective. In recent years, unsupervised anomaly localization algorithms have become more widely used in industrial inspection tasks. This paper aims to help researchers in this field by comprehensively surveying recent achievements in unsupervised anomaly localization in industrial images using deep learning. The survey reviews more than 120 significant publications covering different aspects of anomaly localization, mainly covering various concepts, challenges, taxonomies, benchmark datasets, and quantitative performance comparisons of the methods reviewed. In reviewing the achievements to date, this paper provides detailed predictions and analysis of several future research directions. This review provides detailed technical information for researchers interested in industrial anomaly localization and who wish to apply it to the localization of anomalies in other fields.