# SFANet: Spatial-Frequency Attention Network for Deepfake Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04630 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04630/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [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)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Training data-efficient image transformers & distillation through attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12877/) (2020)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [Xception: Deep Learning with Depthwise Separable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02357/) (2016)
- [BiSeNet: Bilateral Segmentation Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00897/) (2018)
- [MesoNet: a Compact Facial Video Forgery Detection Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00888/) (2018)
- [DeepfakeBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark of Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01426/) (2023)
- [FakeCatcher: Detection of Synthetic Portrait Videos using Biological Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02212/) (2019)
- [Towards Explainable Deep Neural Networks (xDNN)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02523/) (2019)
- [SwinFace: A Multi-task Transformer for Face Recognition, Expression Recognition, Age Estimation and Attribute Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11509/) (2023)
- [Faster Than Lies: Real-time Deepfake Detection using Binary Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04932/) (2024)
- [GM-DF: Generalized Multi-Scenario Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.20078/) (2024)
- [Deepfake detection by exploiting surface anomalies: the SurFake approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20621/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Detecting manipulated media has now become a pressing issue with the recent rise of deepfakes. Most existing approaches fail to generalize across diverse datasets and generation techniques. We thus propose a novel ensemble framework, combining the strengths of transformer-based architectures, such as Swin Transformers and ViTs, and texture-based methods, to achieve better detection accuracy and robustness. Our method introduces innovative data-splitting, sequential training, frequency splitting, patch-based attention, and face segmentation techniques to handle dataset imbalances, enhance high-impact regions (e.g., eyes and mouth), and improve generalization. Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance when tested on the DFWild-Cup dataset, a diverse subset of eight deepfake datasets. The ensemble benefits from the complementarity of these approaches, with transformers excelling in global feature extraction and texturebased methods providing interpretability. This work demonstrates that hybrid models can effectively address the evolving challenges of deepfake detection, offering a robust solution for real-world applications.