# MuSc: Zero-Shot Industrial Anomaly Classification and Segmentation with Mutual Scoring of the Unlabeled Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16753 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16753/

## Key facts

- Cited by 52 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [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)
- [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)
- [SPot-the-Difference Self-Supervised Pre-training for Anomaly Detection and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14315/) (2022)
- [WinCLIP: Zero-/Few-Shot Anomaly Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14814/) (2023)
- [Sub-Image Anomaly Detection with Deep Pyramid Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02357/) (2020)
- [SimpleNet: A Simple Network for Image Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15140/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Student-Teacher Feature Pyramid Matching for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04257/) (2021)
- [Registration based Few-Shot Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07361/) (2022)
- [APRIL-GAN: A Zero-/Few-Shot Anomaly Classification and Segmentation Method for CVPR 2023 VAND Workshop Challenge Tracks 1&2: 1st Place on Zero-shot AD and 4th Place on Few-shot AD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17382/) (2023)
- [Asymmetric Student-Teacher Networks for Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07829/) (2022)
- [Natural Synthetic Anomalies for Self-Supervised Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.15222/) (2021)
- [DSR -- A dual subspace re-projection network for surface anomaly detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01521/) (2022)
- [Pushing the Limits of Fewshot Anomaly Detection in Industry Vision: Graphcore](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12082/) (2023)
- [PyramidFlow: High-Resolution Defect Contrastive Localization using Pyramid Normalizing Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02595/) (2023)
- [Deep One-Class Classification via Interpolated Gaussian Descriptor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10043/) (2021)
- [Segment Any Anomaly without Training via Hybrid Prompt Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10724/) (2023)
- [Prototypical Residual Networks for Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02031/) (2022)
- [Self-supervise, Refine, Repeat: Improving Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06115/) (2021)
- [Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection with Pre-trained Segmentation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09269/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [AnomalyDINO: Boosting Patch-based Few-shot Anomaly Detection with DINOv2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14529/) (2024)
- [Exploring Intrinsic Normal Prototypes within a Single Image for Universal Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02424/) (2025)
- [Do LLMs Understand Visual Anomalies? Uncovering LLM's Capabilities in Zero-shot Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09654/) (2024)
- [Dual-Interrelated Diffusion Model for Few-Shot Anomaly Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13509/) (2024)
- [PointAD: Comprehending 3D Anomalies from Points and Pixels for Zero-shot 3D Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00320/) (2024)
- [AdaptCLIP: Adapting CLIP for Universal Visual Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09926/) (2025)
- [Kernel-Aware Graph Prompt Learning for Few-Shot Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17619/) (2024)
- [VMAD: Visual-enhanced Multimodal Large Language Model for Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.20146/) (2024)
- [MetaUAS: Universal Anomaly Segmentation with One-Prompt Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09265/) (2025)
- [MultiADS: Defect-aware Supervision for Multi-type Anomaly Detection and Segmentation in Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06740/) (2025)
- [AnomalyNCD: Towards Novel Anomaly Class Discovery in Industrial Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14379/) (2024)
- [Triad: Empowering LMM-based Anomaly Detection with Vision Expert-guided Visual Tokenizer and Manufacturing Process](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13184/) (2025)
- [PatchGuard: Adversarially Robust Anomaly Detection and Localization through Vision Transformers and Pseudo Anomalies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09237/) (2025)
- [Foundation Models and Transformers for Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15905/) (2025)
- [SubspaceAD: Training-Free Few-Shot Anomaly Detection via Subspace Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23013/) (2026)
- [CableInspect-AD: An Expert-Annotated Anomaly Detection Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.20353/) (2024)
- [TailedCore: Few-Shot Sampling for Unsupervised Long-Tail Noisy Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02775/) (2025)
- [AD-Copilot: A Vision-Language Assistant for Industrial Anomaly Detection via Visual In-context Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13779/) (2026)
- [Dual-Image Enhanced CLIP for Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04782/) (2024)
- [Global-Regularized Neighborhood Regression for Efficient Zero-Shot Texture Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07333/) (2024)
- [One Language-Free Foundation Model Is Enough for Universal Vision Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05552/) (2026)
- [MuSc-V2: Zero-Shot Multimodal Industrial Anomaly Classification and Segmentation with Mutual Scoring of Unlabeled Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10047/) (2025)
- [From Zero to Hero: Cold-Start Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20341/) (2024)
- [PA-CLIP: Enhancing Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection through Pseudo-Anomaly Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01292/) (2025)
- [A Comprehensive Survey for Real-World Industrial Defect Detection: Challenges, Approaches, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13378/) (2025)
- [ResAD++: Towards Class Agnostic Anomaly Detection via Residual Feature Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23741/) (2025)
- [On the Problem of Consistent Anomalies in Zero-Shot Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10456/) (2025)
- [Training-Free Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection in 3D Brain MRI with 2D Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15315/) (2026)
- [EAGLE: Expert-Augmented Attention Guidance for Tuning-Free Industrial Anomaly Detection in Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17419/) (2026)
- [Toward Long-Tailed Online Anomaly Detection through Class-Agnostic Concepts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16946/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper studies zero-shot anomaly classification (AC) and segmentation (AS) in industrial vision. We reveal that the abundant normal and abnormal cues implicit in unlabeled test images can be exploited for anomaly determination, which is ignored by prior methods. Our key observation is that for the industrial product images, the normal image patches could find a relatively large number of similar patches in other unlabeled images, while the abnormal ones only have a few similar patches. We leverage such a discriminative characteristic to design a novel zero-shot AC/AS method by Mutual Scoring (MuSc) of the unlabeled images, which does not need any training or prompts. Specifically, we perform Local Neighborhood Aggregation with Multiple Degrees (LNAMD) to obtain the patch features that are capable of representing anomalies in varying sizes. Then we propose the Mutual Scoring Mechanism (MSM) to leverage the unlabeled test images to assign the anomaly score to each other. Furthermore, we present an optimization approach named Re-scoring with Constrained Image-level Neighborhood (RsCIN) for image-level anomaly classification to suppress the false positives caused by noises in normal images. The superior performance on the challenging MVTec AD and VisA datasets demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach. Compared with the state-of-the-art zero-shot approaches, MuSc achieves a 21.1% PRO absolute gain (from 72.7% to 93.8%) on MVTec AD, a 19.4% pixel-AP gain and a 14.7% pixel-AUROC gain on VisA. In addition, our zero-shot approach outperforms most of the few-shot approaches and is comparable to some one-class methods. Code is available at https://github.com/xrli-U/MuSc.