Image augmentation is a data augmentation method that generates more training data from the existing training samples. Image Augmentation is especially useful in domains where training data is limited or expensive to obtain, like in biomedical applications.
Dataset distillation seeks to synthesize a highly compact dataset that achieves performance comparable to the original dataset on downstream tasks. For the classification task that use pre-trained self-supervised models as backbones, previous linear gradient matching optimizes synthetic images by encouraging them to mimic the gradient updates induced by real images on the linear classifier. However, this batch-level formulation requires loading thousands of real images and applying multiple rounds of differentiable augmentations to synthetic images at each distillation step, leading to substantial computational and memory overhead. In this paper, we introduce statistical flow matching , a stable and efficient supervised learning framework that optimizes synthetic images by aligning constant statistical flows from target class centers to non-target class centers in the original data. Our approach loads raw statistics only once and performs a single augmentation pass on the synthetic data, achieving performance comparable to or better than the state-of-the-art methods with 10x lower GPU memory usage and 4x shorter runtime. Furthermore, we propose a classifier inheritance strategy that reuses the classifier trained on the original dataset for inference, requiring only an extremely lightweight linear projector and marginal storage while achieving substantial performance gains.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled diagnostics in maxillofacial pathology require structured, high-quality multimodal datasets. However, existing resources provide limited ameloblastoma coverage and lack the format consistency needed for direct model training. We present a newly curated multimodal dataset specifically focused on ameloblastoma, integrating annotated radiological, histopathological, and intraoral clinical images with structured data derived from case reports. Natural language processing techniques were employed to extract clinically relevant features from textual reports, while image data underwent domain specific preprocessing and augmentation. Using this dataset, a multimodal deep learning model was developed to classify ameloblastoma variants, assess behavioral patterns such as recurrence risk, and support surgical planning. The model is designed to accept clinical inputs such as presenting complaint, age, and gender during deployment to enhance personalized inference. Quantitative evaluation demonstrated substantial improvements; variant classification accuracy increased from 46.2 percent to 65.9 percent, and abnormal tissue detection F1-score improved from 43.0 percent to 90.3 percent. Benchmarked against resources like MultiCaRe, this work advances patient-specific decision support by providing both a robust dataset and an adaptable multimodal AI framework.
Recent progress in Vision Language Models (VLMs) has raised the question of whether they can reliably perform nonverbal reasoning. To this end, we introduce VRIQ (Visual Reasoning IQ), a novel benchmark designed to assess and analyze the visual reasoning ability of VLMs. We evaluate models on two sets of tasks: abstract puzzle-style and natural-image reasoning tasks. We find that on abstract puzzles, performance remains near random with an average accuracy of around 28%, while natural tasks yield better but still weak results with 45% accuracy. We also find that tool-augmented reasoning demonstrates only modest improvements. To uncover the source of this weakness, we introduce diagnostic probes targeting perception and reasoning. Our analysis demonstrates that around 56% of failures arise from perception alone, 43% from both perception and reasoning, and only a mere 1% from reasoning alone. This motivates us to design fine-grained diagnostic probe questions targeting specific perception categories (e.g., shape, count, position, 3D/depth), revealing that certain categories cause more failures than others. Our benchmark and analysis establish that current VLMs, even with visual reasoning tools, remain unreliable abstract reasoners, mostly due to perception limitations, and offer a principled basis for improving visual reasoning in multimodal systems.
We present a visual-context image retrieval-augmented generation (ImageRAG) assisted AI agent for automatic target recognition (ATR) of synthetic aperture radar (SAR). SAR is a remote sensing method used in defense and security applications to detect and monitor the positions of military vehicles, which may appear indistinguishable in images. Researchers have extensively studied SAR ATR to improve the differentiation and identification of vehicle types, characteristics, and measurements. Test examples can be compared with known vehicle target types to improve recognition tasks. New methods enhance the capabilities of neural networks, transformer attention, and multimodal large language models. An agentic AI method may be developed to utilize a defined set of tools, such as searching through a library of similar examples. Our proposed method, SAR Retrieval-Augmented Generation (SAR-RAG), combines a multimodal large language model (MLLM) with a vector database of semantic embeddings to support contextual search for image exemplars with known qualities. By recovering past image examples with known true target types, our SAR-RAG system can compare similar vehicle categories, achieving improved ATR prediction accuracy. We evaluate this through search and retrieval metrics, categorical classification accuracy, and numeric regression of vehicle dimensions. These metrics all show improvements when SAR-RAG is added to an MLLM baseline method as an attached ATR memory bank.
Semantic segmentation of high-resolution remote-sensing imagery is critical for urban mapping and land-cover monitoring, yet training data typically exhibits severe long-tailed pixel imbalance. In the dataset LoveDA, this challenge is compounded by an explicit Urban/Rural split with distinct appearance and inconsistent class-frequency statistics across domains. We present a prompt-controlled diffusion augmentation framework that synthesizes paired label--image samples with explicit control of both domain and semantic composition. Stage~A uses a domain-aware, masked ratio-conditioned discrete diffusion model to generate layouts that satisfy user-specified class-ratio targets while respecting learned co-occurrence structure. Stage~B translates layouts into photorealistic, domain-consistent images using Stable Diffusion with ControlNet guidance. Mixing the resulting ratio and domain-controlled synthetic pairs with real data yields consistent improvements across multiple segmentation backbones, with gains concentrated on minority classes and improved Urban and Rural generalization, demonstrating controllable augmentation as a practical mechanism to mitigate long-tail bias in remote-sensing segmentation. Source codes, pretrained models, and synthetic datasets are available at \href{https://github.com/Buddhi19/SyntheticGen.git}{Github}
Data augmentation has long been a cornerstone for reducing overfitting in vision models, with methods like AutoAugment automating the design of task-specific augmentations. Recent advances in generative models, such as conditional diffusion and few-shot NeRFs, offer a new paradigm for data augmentation by synthesizing data with significantly greater diversity and realism. However, unlike traditional augmentations like cropping or rotation, these methods introduce substantial changes that enhance robustness but also risk degrading performance if the augmentations are poorly matched to the task. In this work, we present EvoAug, an automated augmentation learning pipeline, which leverages these generative models alongside an efficient evolutionary algorithm to learn optimal task-specific augmentations. Our pipeline introduces a novel approach to image augmentation that learns stochastic augmentation trees that hierarchically compose augmentations, enabling more structured and adaptive transformations. We demonstrate strong performance across fine-grained classification and few-shot learning tasks. Notably, our pipeline discovers augmentations that align with domain knowledge, even in low-data settings. These results highlight the potential of learned generative augmentations, unlocking new possibilities for robust model training.
With the rapid advancement of image generative models, generative data augmentation has become an effective way to enrich training images, especially when only small-scale datasets are available. At the same time, in practical applications, generative data augmentation can be vulnerable to clean-label backdoor attacks, which aim to bypass human inspection. However, based on theoretical analysis and preliminary experiments, we observe that directly applying existing pixel-level clean-label backdoor attack methods (e.g., COMBAT) to generated images results in low attack success rates. This motivates us to move beyond pixel-level triggers and focus instead on the latent feature level. To this end, we propose InvLBA, an invisible clean-label backdoor attack method for generative data augmentation by latent perturbation. We theoretically prove that the generalization of the clean accuracy and attack success rates of InvLBA can be guaranteed. Experiments on multiple datasets show that our method improves the attack success rate by 46.43% on average, with almost no reduction in clean accuracy and high robustness against SOTA defense methods.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T and NK cell immunotherapies have transformed cancer treatment, and recent studies suggest that the quality of the CAR-T/NK cell immunological synapse (IS) may serve as a functional biomarker for predicting therapeutic efficacy. Accurate detection and segmentation of CAR-T/NK IS structures using artificial neural networks (ANNs) can greatly increase the speed and reliability of IS quantification. However, a persistent challenge is the limited size of annotated microscopy datasets, which restricts the ability of ANNs to generalize. To address this challenge, we integrate two complementary data-augmentation frameworks. First, we employ Instance Aware Automatic Augmentation (IAAA), an automated, instance-preserving augmentation method that generates synthetic CAR-T/NK IS images and corresponding segmentation masks by applying optimized augmentation policies to original IS data. IAAA supports multiple imaging modalities (e.g., fluorescence and brightfield) and can be applied directly to CAR-T/NK IS images derived from patient samples. In parallel, we introduce a Semantic-Aware AI Augmentation (SAAA) pipeline that combines a diffusion-based mask generator with a Pix2Pix conditional image synthesizer. This second method enables the creation of diverse, anatomically realistic segmentation masks and produces high-fidelity CAR-T/NK IS images aligned with those masks, further expanding the training corpus beyond what IAAA alone can provide. Together, these augmentation strategies generate synthetic images whose visual and structural properties closely match real IS data, significantly improving CAR-T/NK IS detection and segmentation performance. By enhancing the robustness and accuracy of IS quantification, this work supports the development of more reliable imaging-based biomarkers for predicting patient response to CAR-T/NK immunotherapy.
Logical anomalies are violations of predefined constraints on object quantity, spatial layout, and compositional relationships in industrial images. While prior work largely treats anomaly detection as a binary decision, such formulations cannot indicate which logical rule is broken and therefore offer limited value for quality assurance. We introduce Logical Anomaly Classification (LAC), a task that unifies anomaly detection and fine-grained violation classification in a single inference step. To tackle LAC, we propose LogiCls, a vision-language framework that decomposes complex logical constraints into a sequence of verifiable subqueries. We further present a data-centric instruction synthesis pipeline that generates chain-of-thought (CoT) supervision for these subqueries, coupling precise grounding annotations with diverse image-text augmentations to adapt vision language models (VLMs) to logic-sensitive reasoning. Training is stabilized by a difficulty-aware resampling strategy that emphasizes challenging subqueries and long tail constraint types. Extensive experiments demonstrate that LogiCls delivers robust, interpretable, and accurate industrial logical anomaly classification, providing both the predicted violation categories and their evidence trails.
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a widespread disorder in women of reproductive age, characterized by a hormonal imbalance, irregular periods, and multiple ovarian cysts. Infertility, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular risks are long-term complications that make early detection essential. In this paper, we design a powerful framework based on transfer learning utilizing DenseNet201 and ResNet50 for classifying ovarian ultrasound images. The model was trained on an online dataset containing 3856 ultrasound images of cyst-infected and non-infected patients. Each ultrasound frame was resized to 224x224 pixels and encoded with precise pathological indicators. The MixUp and CutMix augmentation strategies were used to improve generalization, yielding a peak validation accuracy of 99.80% by Densenet201 and a validation loss of 0.617 with alpha values of 0.25 and 0.4, respectively. We evaluated the model's interpretability using leading Explainable AI (XAI) approaches such as SHAP, Grad-CAM, and LIME, reasoning with and presenting explicit visual reasons for the model's behaviors, therefore increasing the model's transparency. This study proposes an automated system for medical picture diagnosis that may be used effectively and confidently in clinical practice.