# Neural Network Training Strategy to Enhance Anomaly Detection Performance: A Perspective on Reconstruction Loss Amplification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14595 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14595/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Aug 2023.

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

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Averaging Weights Leads to Wider Optima and Better Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05407/) (2018)
- [Visualizing the Loss Landscape of Neural Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.09913/) (2017)
- [Memorizing Normality to Detect Anomaly: Memory-augmented Deep Autoencoder for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02639/) (2019)
- [Anomaly Detection via Reverse Distillation from One-Class Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10703/) (2022)
- [GANomaly: Semi-Supervised Anomaly Detection via Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06725/) (2018)
- [Divide-and-Assemble: Learning Block-wise Memory for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13118/) (2021)
- [Improved anomaly detection by training an autoencoder with skip connections on images corrupted with Stain-shaped noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12977/) (2020)
- [SQUID: Deep Feature In-Painting for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13495/) (2021)
- [Multi-Mode Online Knowledge Distillation for Self-Supervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06461/) (2023)
- [FAPM: Fast Adaptive Patch Memory for Real-time Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07381/) (2022)
- [Anomaly Detection in Particulate Matter Sensor using Hypothesis Pruning Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00583/) (2019)
- [Adversarial Pixel Restoration as a Pretext Task for Transferable Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08803/) (2022)

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

- [Excision And Recovery: Visual Defect Obfuscation Based Self-Supervised Anomaly Detection Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04010/) (2023)
- [HarmoniAD: Harmonizing Local Structures and Global Semantics for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00327/) (2026)
- [Test-Time Adaptation for Anomaly Segmentation via Topology-Aware Optimal Transport Chaining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20333/) (2026)
- [Learning Topology-Aware Representations via Test-Time Adaptation for Anomaly Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28268/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unsupervised anomaly detection (UAD) is a widely adopted approach in industry due to rare anomaly occurrences and data imbalance. A desirable characteristic of an UAD model is contained generalization ability which excels in the reconstruction of seen normal patterns but struggles with unseen anomalies. Recent studies have pursued to contain the generalization capability of their UAD models in reconstruction from different perspectives, such as design of neural network (NN) structure and training strategy. In contrast, we note that containing of generalization ability in reconstruction can also be obtained simply from steep-shaped loss landscape. Motivated by this, we propose a loss landscape sharpening method by amplifying the reconstruction loss, dubbed Loss AMPlification (LAMP). LAMP deforms the loss landscape into a steep shape so the reconstruction error on unseen anomalies becomes greater. Accordingly, the anomaly detection performance is improved without any change of the NN architecture. Our findings suggest that LAMP can be easily applied to any reconstruction error metrics in UAD settings where the reconstruction model is trained with anomaly-free samples only.