# SpotEdit: Selective Region Editing in Diffusion Transformers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22323 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22323/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 30 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

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

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Imagic: Text-Based Real Image Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09276/) (2022)
- [FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15742/) (2025)
- [Blended Diffusion for Text-driven Editing of Natural Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14818/) (2021)
- [DiffEdit: Diffusion-based semantic image editing with mask guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11427/) (2022)
- [MagicBrush: A Manually Annotated Dataset for Instruction-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10012/) (2023)
- [Zero-shot Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03027/) (2023)
- [OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15098/) (2024)
- [Emu Edit: Precise Image Editing via Recognition and Generation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10089/) (2023)
- [Timestep Embedding Tells: It's Time to Cache for Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19108/) (2024)
- [ImgEdit: A Unified Image Editing Dataset and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20275/) (2025)
- [Delta-DiT: A Training-Free Acceleration Method Tailored for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01125/) (2024)
- [FORA: Fast-Forward Caching in Diffusion Transformer Acceleration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01425/) (2024)
- [From Reusing to Forecasting: Accelerating Diffusion Models with TaylorSeers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06923/) (2025)
- [DiTFastAttn: Attention Compression for Diffusion Transformer Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08552/) (2024)
- [Accelerating Diffusion Models via Early Stop of the Diffusion Process](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12524/) (2022)
- [OminiControl2: Efficient Conditioning for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08280/) (2025)
- [KV-Edit: Training-Free Image Editing for Precise Background Preservation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17363/) (2025)
- [EEdit: Rethinking the Spatial and Temporal Redundancy for Efficient Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10270/) (2025)
- [Region-Adaptive Sampling for Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10389/) (2025)
- [Follow-Your-Shape: Shape-Aware Image Editing via Trajectory-Guided Region Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08134/) (2025)
- [TurboEdit: Instant text-based image editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08332/) (2024)
- [OmniCache: A Trajectory-Oriented Global Perspective on Training-Free Cache Reuse for Diffusion Transformer Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16212/) (2025)
- [RegionE: Adaptive Region-Aware Generation for Efficient Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25590/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [SpecEdit: Training-Free Acceleration for Diffusion based Image Editing via Semantic Locking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02152/) (2026)
- [FlashClear: Ultra-Fast Image Content Removal via Efficient Step Distillation and Feature Caching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09003/) (2026)
- [ImVideoEdit: Image-learning Video Editing via 2D Spatial Difference Attention Blocks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07958/) (2026)
- [MaskFlow: Precise, Consistent and Seamless Regional Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06929/) (2026)
- [SR-Edit: Region-Aware Image Editing via Self-Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02504/) (2026)
- [Delving into Asymmetric Information Dynamics for High-Fidelity Virtual Try-On](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25881/) (2026)
- [Beyond Temporal Smoothing: Spatial Energy Budgets Stabilize One-Step Diffusion Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32841/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion Transformer models have significantly advanced image editing by encoding conditional images and integrating them into transformer layers. However, most edits involve modifying only small regions, while current methods uniformly process and denoise all tokens at every timestep, causing redundant computation and potentially degrading unchanged areas. This raises a fundamental question: Is it truly necessary to regenerate every region during editing? To address this, we propose SpotEdit, a training-free diffusion editing framework that selectively updates only the modified regions. SpotEdit comprises two key components: SpotSelector identifies stable regions via perceptual similarity and skips their computation by reusing conditional image features; SpotFusion adaptively blends these features with edited tokens through a dynamic fusion mechanism, preserving contextual coherence and editing quality. By reducing unnecessary computation and maintaining high fidelity in unmodified areas, SpotEdit achieves efficient and precise image editing.
