# Blind Localization and Clustering of Anomalies in Textures

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12246 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12246/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Wide Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.07146/) (2016)
- [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)
- [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)
- [Invariant Information Clustering for Unsupervised Image Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06653/) (2018)
- [Deep Learning for Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.03407/) (2019)
- [SCAN: Learning to Classify Images without Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12320/) (2020)
- [CFLOW-AD: Real-Time Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Localization via Conditional Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12571/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Improving Unsupervised Defect Segmentation by Applying Structural Similarity to Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02011/) (2018)
- [Unsupervised Semantic Segmentation by Distilling Feature Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08414/) (2022)
- [PiCIE: Unsupervised Semantic Segmentation using Invariance and Equivariance in Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17070/) (2021)
- [Deep Industrial Image Anomaly Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11514/) (2023)
- [Deep Autoencoding Models for Unsupervised Anomaly Segmentation in Brain MR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04488/) (2018)
- [CFA: Coupled-hypersphere-based Feature Adaptation for Target-Oriented Anomaly Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04325/) (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)
- [SPICE: Semantic Pseudo-labeling for Image Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09382/) (2021)
- [Skip-GANomaly: Skip Connected and Adversarially Trained Encoder-Decoder Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08954/) (2019)
- [Anomalib: A Deep Learning Library for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08341/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Anomaly Localization using Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02796/) (2019)
- [Deep Learning for Unsupervised Anomaly Localization in Industrial Images: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10298/) (2022)
- [Segment Any Anomaly without Training via Hybrid Prompt Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10724/) (2023)
- [Leveraging Hidden Positives for Unsupervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15014/) (2023)
- [GATCluster: Self-Supervised Gaussian-Attention Network for Image Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11863/) (2020)
- [Self-supervise, Refine, Repeat: Improving Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06115/) (2021)
- [Anomaly Clustering: Grouping Images into Coherent Clusters of Anomaly Types](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11573/) (2021)
- [Deep Generative Models in the Real-World: An Open Challenge from Medical Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05452/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [AnomalyNCD: Towards Novel Anomaly Class Discovery in Industrial Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14379/) (2024)
- [FruitNeRF++: A Generalized Multi-Fruit Counting Method Utilizing Contrastive Learning and Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19863/) (2025)
- [Example-Based Feature Painting on Textures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01513/) (2025)
- [Quantized FCA: Efficient Zero-Shot Texture Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15602/) (2025)
- [ProtoAnomalyNCD: Prototype Learning for Multi-class Novel Anomaly Discovery in Industrial Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12938/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Anomaly detection and localization in images is a growing field in computer vision. In this area, a seemingly understudied problem is anomaly clustering, i.e., identifying and grouping different types of anomalies in a fully unsupervised manner. In this work, we propose a novel method for clustering anomalies in largely stationary images (textures) in a blind setting. That is, the input consists of normal and anomalous images without distinction and without labels. What contributes to the difficulty of the task is that anomalous regions are often small and may present only subtle changes in appearance, which can be easily overshadowed by the genuine variance in the texture. Moreover, each anomaly type may have a complex appearance distribution. We introduce a novel scheme for solving this task using a combination of blind anomaly localization and contrastive learning. By identifying the anomalous regions with high fidelity, we can restrict our focus to those regions of interest; then, contrastive learning is employed to increase the separability of different anomaly types and reduce the intra-class variation. Our experiments show that the proposed solution yields significantly better results compared to prior work, setting a new state of the art. Project page: https://reality.tf.fau.de/pub/ardelean2024blind.html.