# Morphing Through Time: Diffusion-Based Bridging of Temporal Gaps for Robust Alignment in Change Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07976 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07976/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [PWC-Net: CNNs for Optical Flow Using Pyramid, Warping, and Cost Volume](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.02371/) (2017)
- [GMFlow: Learning Optical Flow via Global Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13680/) (2021)
- [D2-Net: A Trainable CNN for Joint Detection and Description of Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03561/) (2019)
- [Fully Convolutional Siamese Networks for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.08462/) (2018)
- [Remote Sensing Image Change Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00208/) (2021)
- [RoMa: Robust Dense Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15404/) (2023)
- [A Transformer-Based Siamese Network for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01293/) (2022)
- [DiffMorpher: Unleashing the Capability of Diffusion Models for Image Morphing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07409/) (2023)
- [Changen2: Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Generative Change Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17998/) (2024)
- [IMPUS: Image Morphing with Perceptually-Uniform Sampling Using Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06792/) (2023)
- [ChangeAnywhere: Sample Generation for Remote Sensing Change Detection via Semantic Latent Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08892/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Remote sensing change detection is often challenged by spatial misalignment between bi-temporal images, especially when acquisitions are separated by long seasonal or multi-year gaps. While modern convolutional and transformer-based models perform well on aligned data, their reliance on precise co-registration limits their robustness in real-world conditions. Existing joint registration-detection frameworks typically require retraining and transfer poorly across domains. We introduce a modular pipeline that improves spatial and temporal robustness without altering existing change detection networks. The framework integrates diffusion-based semantic morphing, dense registration, and residual flow refinement. A diffusion module synthesizes intermediate morphing frames that bridge large appearance gaps, enabling RoMa to estimate stepwise correspondences between consecutive frames. The composed flow is then refined through a lightweight U-Net to produce a high-fidelity warp that co-registers the original image pair. Extensive experiments on LEVIR-CD, WHU-CD, and DSIFN-CD show consistent gains in both registration accuracy and downstream change detection across multiple backbones, demonstrating the generality and effectiveness of the proposed approach.