TED:Text-Axis Evidence Decomposition for Prompted Anomaly Localization
Organizations: Department of Artificial Intelligence, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea · SNUAILAB Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea
Abstract
CLIP is a powerful vision-language model, but it was not designed for fine-grained defect localization; CLIP-based anomaly detectors therefore adapt it with prompts or lightweight modules to increase defect sensitivity. We show that stronger sensitivity does not necessarily make local evidence reliable: under domain shift, adapted CLIP-AD models often assign high anomaly scores to both true defects and visually complex normal regions. The issue is not simply missing defect information, but a local scoring rule that decodes defect and hard-normal evidence, having the same anomaly evidence. We propose TED (Text-Axis Evidence Decomposition), a post-hoc scoring method that asks whether each ambiguous response is better supported by source defect patches or by source normal patches mistaken as anomalous. TED compares these supports under the host's normal-versus-anomaly text response, leaves the backbone and prompts unchanged, and requires no target-domain training. It works as a train-free score for raw VLM backbones or as a source-calibrated residual correction for adapted CLIP-AD hosts. Across frozen VLM backbones, TED substantially improves pixel-level localization over raw prompt similarity; across adapted hosts, it improves most pixel-level settings over P-AUROC, P-PRO, and P-AP. Gains are largest under stronger hard-FP competition, with mean localization gain increasing from +5.0 in low-competition regimes to about +10.9 in mid/high-competition regimes. These results suggest that recoverable defect evidence can already exist in pretrained multimodal representations, but reliable localization requires decoding it against hard-normal competitors. Code will be released at TED GitHub repository.
Figures & tables
| Backbone | Variant | MVTec Bergmann et al. (2019) | VisA Zou et al. (2022) | MPDD Liu et al. (2024) | BTAD Mishra et al. (2021) | MVTec2 Heckler-Kram et al. (2026) | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I-AUC | P-AUC | PRO | AP | I-AUC | P-AUC | PRO | AP | I-AUC | P-AUC | PRO | AP | I-AUC | P-AUC | PRO | AP | I-AUC | P-AUC | PRO | AP | ||
| ViT-L/14-336 | B | 88.4 | 32.2 | 9.7 | 2.8 | 77.3 | 41.6 | 13.5 | 1.3 | 73.3 | 24.4 | 3.9 | 2.2 | 65.8 | 23.9 | 3.7 | 1.8 | 55.7 | 33.1 | 13.0 | 0.6 |
| T-TED | 88.2 | 69.3 | 64.0 | 21.2 | 79.4 | 59.2 | 42.3 | 6.7 | 78.5 | 76.4 | 60.5 | 5.4 | 71.3 | 77.9 | 50.8 | 17.2 | 58.4 | 68.2 | 31.5 | 6.4 | |
| C-TED | 88.2 | 69.2 | 63.9 | 21.1 | 79.4 | 59.3 | 42.7 | 6.7 | 78.5 | 76.0 | 60.6 | 5.4 | 71.3 | 77.6 | 50.5 | 16.9 | 58.5 | 68.2 | 31.5 | 6.4 | |
| ViT-B/16+ | B | 89.5 | 17.3 | 1.7 | 2.4 | 73.2 | 21.7 | 3.4 | 0.4 | 60.1 | 28.0 | 4.1 | 1.4 | 67.1 | 38.3 | 7.5 | 2.2 | 54.7 | 35.5 | 5.7 | 0.5 |
| T-TED | 90.0 | 82.9 | 67.8 | 17.1 | 75.5 | 77.4 | 51.9 | 6.1 | 59.4 | 70.8 | 48.4 | 10.2 | 69.0 | 63.3 | 34.8 | 6.1 | 54.5 | 64.5 | 29.7 | 2.7 | |
| H-FP bin | #bins | Sev. | PRO / AP | Loc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 3 | 0.07 | +3.7 / +6.3 | +5.0 |
| Mid | 3 | 0.10 | +8.8 / +13.8 | +11.3 |
| High | 3 | 0.19 | +11.3 / +9.8 | +10.6 |
| Host | Method | P-AUROC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | Baseline | 92.48 | 59.78 | 36.55 |
| T-TED | 86.58 | 53.50 | 27.88 | |
| C-TED w/o hard-FP | 93.58 | 61.76 | 38.40 | |
| C-TED | 94.23 | 65.42 | 39.68 | |
| FAPrompt | Baseline | 90.52 | 60.32 | 21.54 |
| T-TED | 90.00 | 60.12 | 20.33 |
| Control | PRO / AP | Loc | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scalar replace | 16 | -19.8 / -14.1 | -17.0 |
| Scalar residual | 16 | +2.1 / -5.3 | -1.6 |
| C-TED | 16 | +4.4 / +3.7 | +4.1 |
| Bank | Ret. | PRO | AP | Loc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 64 | 256 | +7.17 | +13.33 | +10.25 |
| 128 | 512 | +7.12 | +13.32 | +10.22 |
| 512 | 2048 | +7.18 | +13.33 | +10.25 |
Appendix figures & tables22 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Item | Policy |
|---|---|
| Defect bank | Source anomalous patches overlapping source masks |
| Hard-FP bank | High-scoring source normal patches under the host baseline |
| Target usage | Target masks and scores are used only for final evaluation |
| Bank budget | Fixed per host; not selected per target dataset |
| Hard-FP mining | Fixed source-normal top fraction |
| Support bandwidth | Fixed before target evaluation |
| Host / transfer | Control | P-AUC | PRO | AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP MVTec BTAD | C-TED | +1.03 | +3.88 | +1.71 |
| AA-CLIP MVTec BTAD | Label swap | -6.40 | -8.28 | -10.45 |
| AA-CLIP VisA BTAD | C-TED | -0.98 | +0.69 | +4.09 |
| AA-CLIP VisA BTAD | Label swap | -12.19 | -15.95 | -17.23 |
| AdaCLIP VisA BTAD | C-TED | +0.31 | +2.84 | +0.41 |
| AdaCLIP VisA BTAD | Label swap | -0.29 | +0.45 | -0.28 |
| Host | Layers | M | I-AUC | P-AUC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AdaCLIP | full | B | 69.01 | 96.09 | 30.48 | 29.76 |
| T | 69.46 | 96.08 | 30.67 | 29.70 | ||
| C | 69.25 | 96.34 | 44.00 | 29.93 | ||
| last | B | 61.59 | 84.31 | 40.79 | 24.29 | |
| T | 70.00 | 84.31 | 43.06 | 24.31 | ||
| C | 70.42 | 89.62 | 54.00 | 25.95 |
| Host | Budget | Retained | ms/img | Mem. | Loc | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | 64 | 6 | 6634.0 | 206.8 | 3.8GB | 2.7 |
| AA-CLIP | 128 | 6 | 12180.0 | 182.9 | 3.8GB | 2.9 |
| AA-CLIP | 512 | 6 | 35238.0 | 149.3 | 3.9GB | 2.9 |
| FAPrompt | 64 | 6 | 256.0 | 1070.1 | 4.1GB | 9.1 |
| FAPrompt | 128 | 6 | 512.0 | 1041.9 | 4.1GB | 8.6 |
| FAPrompt | 256 | 6 | 1024.0 | 1055.2 | 4.1GB | 9.1 |
| Host | Transfer | P-AUC | PRO | AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | MVTec BTAD | -5.75 | -7.53 | -11.35 |
| MVTec MPDD | +0.58 | +4.92 | +3.27 | |
| MVTec VisA | -0.43 | -1.58 | -3.28 | |
| VisA BTAD | -13.48 | -16.22 | -27.88 | |
| VisA MPDD | -2.53 | -6.18 | -5.98 | |
| VisA MVTec | -5.45 | -6.30 | -12.33 |
| Readout | Mode | P-AUC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full-D 1-NN | Replacement | |||
| Residual | ||||
| Full-D prototype | Replacement | |||
| Residual | ||||
| Full-D LogMeanExp | Replacement | |||
| Residual |
| Host | Source budget | PRO | AP | Loc | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | 1 img/cls | 4 | +3.3 | +1.9 | +2.6 |
| AA-CLIP | 2 img/cls | 4 | +3.5 | +1.7 | +2.6 |
| AA-CLIP | 4 img/cls | 4 | +3.2 | +3.2 | +3.2 |
| AA-CLIP | all img/cls | 4 | +3.1 | +2.9 | +3.0 |
| FAPrompt | 8 bank/cls | 3 | +7.2 | +13.4 | +10.3 |
| FAPrompt | 16 bank/cls | 3 | +7.3 | +13.4 | +10.4 |
| Host | Replace | Residual | C-TED | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | 4 | -7.4 | -4.7 | +3.0 |
| AdaCLIP | 4 | -12.3 | -4.1 | +4.1 |
| FAPrompt | 4 | -42.9 | +3.8 | +10.0 |
| 0 | 0.25 | 0.5 | 1 | 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loc | +0.0 | +0.3 | +0.3 | -0.0 | -5.2 |
| Host | Host replace | Host residual | C-TED | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | 4 | |||
| FAPrompt | 4 | |||
| AdaCLIP | 4 |
| Scope | AUC [95% CI] | Loc [95% CI] | |
|---|---|---|---|
| FAPrompt | 36 | +8.1 [+6.3, +10.0] | +8.4 [+7.1, +9.7] |
| AA-CLIP | 10 | +2.2 [-1.9, +5.9] | +11.3 [-2.0, +25.1] |
| AdaCLIP | 12 | -2.5 [-4.3, -1.1] | +4.6 [+3.5, +5.7] |
| AdaptCLIP | 12 | +1.2 [+1.1, +1.3] | +0.3 [+0.1, +0.5] |
| All adapted hosts | 70 | +4.3 [+2.8, +5.8] | +6.8 [+4.7, +9.1] |
| Host | Backbone | Target | Method | I-AUROC | P-AUROC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA-CLIP | ViT-B/16+ | MVTec | Base | 50.81 0.00 | 39.27 0.00 | 11.86 0.00 | 2.97 0.00 |
| OURS | 60.67 0.05 | 69.22 0.35 | 38.88 0.82 | 10.39 0.17 | |||
| VisA | Base | 46.61 0.00 | 54.49 0.00 | 22.32 0.00 | 1.31 0.00 | ||
| OURS | 54.41 0.14 | 63.66 0.22 | 28.74 0.29 | 2.18 0.04 | |||
| MPDD | Base | 44.86 0.00 | 88.93 0.00 | 65.37 0.00 | 12.10 0.00 | ||
| OURS | 48.04 0.21 | 88.98 0.28 | 65.44 0.67 | 12.07 0.05 |
| Host | Backbone | Target | Method | I-AUROC | P-AUROC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FAPrompt | ViT-B/16+ | MVTec | Base | 80.75 0.00 | 65.61 0.00 | 35.51 0.00 | 8.78 0.00 |
| OURS | 80.75 0.00 | 77.95 0.00 | 62.34 0.01 | 24.52 0.00 | |||
| VisA | Base | 69.16 0.00 | 67.98 0.00 | 40.10 0.00 | 3.61 0.00 | ||
| OURS | 69.16 0.00 | 71.56 0.01 | 54.98 0.08 | 8.79 0.00 | |||
| MPDD | Base | 67.35 0.00 | 81.33 0.00 | 59.09 0.00 | 11.07 0.00 | ||
| OURS | 67.35 0.00 | 82.45 0.01 | 61.23 0.17 | 12.98 0.01 |
| Host | Backbone | Target | Method | I-AUROC | P-AUROC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AdaptCLIP | ViT-B/16+ | MVTec | Base | 66.05 4.16 | 68.91 10.44 | 43.40 9.63 | 15.22 3.02 |
| OURS | 66.06 4.14 | 68.63 10.58 | 42.75 9.76 | 15.41 3.01 | |||
| VisA | Base | 54.46 3.63 | 50.17 14.41 | 22.72 16.49 | 2.40 2.06 | ||
| OURS | 54.21 3.27 | 50.01 14.65 | 22.33 16.42 | 2.36 1.99 | |||
| MPDD | Base | 57.00 3.18 | 69.97 7.55 | 35.12 5.41 | 6.10 2.76 | ||
| OURS | 57.01 3.18 | 70.20 7.70 | 35.51 5.62 | 6.10 2.80 |
| Host | Backbone | Target | Method | I-AUROC | P-AUROC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AdaCLIP | ViT-B/16+ | MVTec | Base | 48.53 7.16 | 50.32 6.37 | 19.74 5.72 | 4.27 0.97 |
| OURS | 49.67 8.24 | 50.26 6.45 | 20.81 5.70 | 4.46 1.17 | |||
| VisA | Base | 49.19 1.25 | 57.15 7.57 | 25.60 6.46 | 1.16 0.35 | ||
| OURS | 50.83 1.63 | 58.70 6.52 | 28.22 5.92 | 1.32 0.39 | |||
| MPDD | Base | 43.82 2.60 | 42.46 10.95 | 14.05 6.18 | 2.82 0.87 | ||
| OURS | 42.64 0.32 | 42.57 9.39 | 15.00 5.11 | 2.61 0.71 |
| Host | Backbone | Target | Method | I-AUROC | P-AUROC | P-PRO | P-AP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BayesPFL | ViT-B/16+ | MVTec | Base | 49.68 1.01 | 49.73 3.18 | 17.14 3.94 | 4.29 0.80 |
| OURS | 52.49 2.56 | 49.67 3.19 | 17.00 3.86 | 4.26 0.78 | |||
| VisA | Base | 51.41 1.85 | 54.71 3.85 | 18.93 5.43 | 0.90 0.26 | ||
| OURS | 50.20 2.31 | 54.60 3.67 | 18.87 5.32 | 0.88 0.24 | |||
| MPDD | Base | 50.35 4.02 | 58.47 9.08 | 22.52 9.48 | 2.39 0.29 | ||
| OURS | 51.26 4.88 | 58.27 8.73 | 22.43 9.22 | 2.38 0.27 |
| Transfer | Host | Recipe | B | T | C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VisA MVTec | AdaCLIP | Full(B) | 89.93 / 89.89 / 44.03 / 41.60 | 91.43 / 89.88 / 43.60 / 41.46 | 91.64 / 89.86 / 47.97 / 41.85 |
| EL-r | 87.83 / 80.21 / 18.18 / 22.40 | 88.74 / 80.21 / 17.94 / 22.39 | 88.84 / 80.96 / 26.25 / 23.81 | ||
| M2-r | 89.26 / 87.62 / 23.50 / 36.18 | 87.74 / 87.61 / 23.63 / 36.12 | 87.74 / 87.79 / 25.42 / 36.40 | ||
| L2-r | 90.58 / 89.47 / 15.19 / 36.35 | 89.07 / 89.47 / 15.14 / 36.31 | 88.69 / 90.84 / 22.78 / 39.28 | ||
| L-r | 90.40 / 88.96 / 34.83 / 35.78 | 91.99 / 88.96 / 34.66 / 35.77 | 91.79 / 89.15 / 46.27 / 36.77 | ||
| FAPrompt | Full(B) | 91.45 / 89.95 / 73.57 / 22.35 | 91.45 / 40.41 / 25.32 / 8.16 | 91.45 / 90.19 / 76.83 / 30.94 |