Efficient fabric anomaly detection: A transfer learning framework with expedited training times

In industrial quality control, anomaly detection plays a critical role in identifying defective products. However, because of the rarity and time-consuming nature of defect collection, training models often rely solely on defect-free samples. This necessitates the use of unsupervised anomaly-detection techniques trained exclusively on defect-free data. Alternatively, defect data can be synthesized to augment the dataset with defective samples. In the textile industry, expeditious model training is crucial to ensure a smooth production flow. Unfortunately, most unsupervised methods require extensive training time. This paper proposes a novel transfer learning approach designed to achieve training times in seconds while effectively adapting the model to the target domain of fabric anomaly detection. The key contributions of our method include significantly reduced training times, up to 10 times faster than current state-of-the-art methods, and comparable performance in anomaly detection, achieving results on par with state-of-the-art approaches on benchmark datasets (MVTEC Anomaly Detection, TILDA, AITEX and DAGM). Additionally, our approach improves inference times, ensuring expedited and efficient anomaly detection during production. The proposed method offers a practical and efficient solution for real-time industrial quality control.