# STAGE: Segmentation-oriented Industrial Anomaly Synthesis via Graded Diffusion with Explicit Mask Alignment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06693 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.06693/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [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)
- [BiSeNet V2: Bilateral Network with Guided Aggregation for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02147/) (2020)
- [VT-ADL: A Vision Transformer Network for Image Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10036/) (2021)
- [Convergence of score-based generative modeling for general data distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12381/) (2022)
- [DeSTSeg: Segmentation Guided Denoising Student-Teacher for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11317/) (2022)
- [Rethinking BiSeNet For Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13188/) (2021)
- [RealNet: A Feature Selection Network with Realistic Synthetic Anomaly for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05897/) (2024)
- [AnomalyDiffusion: Few-Shot Anomaly Image Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05767/) (2023)
- [Defect-GAN: High-Fidelity Defect Synthesis for Automated Defect Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15158/) (2021)
- [A Unified Anomaly Synthesis Strategy with Gradient Ascent for Industrial Anomaly Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09359/) (2024)
- [Few-Shot Defect Image Generation via Defect-Aware Feature Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02389/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Reconstruction Autoencoder-Based Out-of-Distribution Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02194/) (2022)
- [Latent Outlier Exposure for Anomaly Detection with Contaminated Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08088/) (2022)
- [Dual-Interrelated Diffusion Model for Few-Shot Anomaly Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13509/) (2024)
- [SeaS: Few-shot Industrial Anomaly Image Generation with Separation and Sharing Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14987/) (2024)
- [Fascinating Supervisory Signals and Where to Find Them: Deep Anomaly Detection with Scale Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16114/) (2023)
- [Supervised Anomaly Detection for Complex Industrial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04953/) (2024)
- [Progressive Boundary Guided Anomaly Synthesis for Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17458/) (2024)
- [Defect Spectrum: A Granular Look of Large-Scale Defect Datasets with Rich Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17316/) (2023)
- [REB: Reducing Biases in Representation for Industrial Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12577/) (2023)
- [Dual-Modeling Decouple Distillation for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03888/) (2024)
- [DictAS: A Framework for Class-Generalizable Few-Shot Anomaly Segmentation via Dictionary Lookup](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13560/) (2025)
- [Few-shot Defect Image Generation based on Consistency Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00372/) (2024)
- [Synth4Seg -- Learning Defect Data Synthesis for Defect Segmentation using Bi-level Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18490/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [MIRAGE: Model-agnostic Industrial Realistic Anomaly Generation and Evaluation for Visual Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13507/) (2026)
- [Learning Topology-Aware Representations via Test-Time Adaptation for Anomaly Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28268/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Segmentation-oriented Industrial Anomaly Synthesis (SIAS) plays a pivotal role in enhancing the performance of downstream anomaly segmentation, as it provides an effective means of expanding abnormal data. However, existing SIAS methods face several critical limitations: (i) the synthesized anomalies often lack intricate texture details and fail to align precisely with the surrounding background, and (ii) they struggle to generate fine-grained, pixel-level anomalies. To address these challenges, we propose Segmentation-oriented Anomaly synthesis via Graded diffusion with Explicit mask alignment, termed STAGE. STAGE introduces a novel anomaly inference strategy that incorporates clean background information as a prior to guide the denoising distribution, enabling the model to more effectively distinguish and highlight abnormal foregrounds. Furthermore, it employs a graded diffusion framework with an anomaly-only branch to explicitly record local anomalies during both the forward and reverse processes, ensuring that subtle anomalies are not overlooked. Finally, STAGE incorporates the explicit mask alignment (EMA) strategy to progressively align the synthesized anomalies with the background, resulting in context-consistent and structurally coherent generations. Extensive experiments on the MVTec and BTAD datasets demonstrate that STAGE achieves state-of-the-art performance in SIAS, which in turn enhances downstream anomaly segmentation.