Wavelet-Enhanced PaDiM for Industrial Anomaly Detection

Anomaly detection and localization in industrial images are essential for automated quality inspection. PaDiM, a prominent method, models the distribution of normal image features extracted by pre-trained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) but reduces dimensionality through random channel selection, potentially discarding structured information. We propose Wavelet-Enhanced PaDiM (WE-PaDiM), which integrates Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) analysis with multi-layer CNN features in a structured manner. WE-PaDiM applies 2D DWT to feature maps from multiple backbone layers, selects specific frequency subbands (e.g., LL, LH, HL), spatially aligns them, and concatenates them channel-wise before modeling with PaDiM's multivariate Gaussian framework. This DWT-before-concatenation strategy provides a principled method for feature selection based on frequency content relevant to anomalies, leveraging multi-scale wavelet information as an alternative to random selection. We evaluate WE-PaDiM on the challenging MVTec AD dataset with multiple backbones (ResNet-18 and EfficientNet B0-B6). The method achieves strong performance in anomaly detection and localization, yielding average results of 99.32% Image-AUC and 92.10% Pixel-AUC across 15 categories with per-class optimized configurations. Our analysis shows that wavelet choices affect performance trade-offs: simpler wavelets (e.g., Haar) with detail subbands (HL or LH/HL/HH) often enhance localization, while approximation bands (LL) improve image-level detection. WE-PaDiM thus offers a competitive and interpretable alternative to random feature selection in PaDiM, achieving robust results suitable for industrial inspection with comparable efficiency.