# Masked Transformer for image Anomaly Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.15540 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.15540/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Generative Adversarial Networks to Guide Marker Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05921/) (2017)
- [Uninformed Students: Student-Teacher Anomaly Detection with Discriminative Latent Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02357/) (2019)
- [Multiresolution Knowledge Distillation for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11108/) (2020)
- [Deep Anomaly Detection Using Geometric Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10917/) (2018)
- [Improving Unsupervised Defect Segmentation by Applying Structural Similarity to Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02011/) (2018)
- [VT-ADL: A Vision Transformer Network for Image Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10036/) (2021)
- [OCGAN: One-class Novelty Detection Using GANs with Constrained Latent Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08550/) (2019)
- [The MVTec 3D-AD Dataset for Unsupervised 3D Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09045/) (2021)
- [Latent Space Autoregression for Novelty Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01653/) (2018)
- [Deep Autoencoding Models for Unsupervised Anomaly Segmentation in Brain MR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04488/) (2018)
- [Efficient GAN-Based Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06222/) (2018)
- [MADGAN: unsupervised Medical Anomaly Detection GAN using multiple adjacent brain MRI slice reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13559/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Deep Industrial Image Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11514/) (2023)
- [Foundation Models and Transformers for Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15905/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Library for Benchmarking Multi-class Visual Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03262/) (2024)
- [Feature Attenuation of Defective Representation Can Resolve Incomplete Masking on Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04597/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image anomaly detection consists in detecting images or image portions that are visually different from the majority of the samples in a dataset. The task is of practical importance for various real-life applications like biomedical image analysis, visual inspection in industrial production, banking, traffic management, etc. Most of the current deep learning approaches rely on image reconstruction: the input image is projected in some latent space and then reconstructed, assuming that the network (mostly trained on normal data) will not be able to reconstruct the anomalous portions. However, this assumption does not always hold. We thus propose a new model based on the Vision Transformer architecture with patch masking: the input image is split in several patches, and each patch is reconstructed only from the surrounding data, thus ignoring the potentially anomalous information contained in the patch itself. We then show that multi-resolution patches and their collective embeddings provide a large improvement in the model's performance compared to the exclusive use of the traditional square patches. The proposed model has been tested on popular anomaly detection datasets such as MVTec and head CT and achieved good results when compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.