Skip to main content
Log in

Distance-guided prototype network for few-shot vision-based industrial defect detection

  • Published:
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Few-shot defect detection holds significant importance for adapting to complex industrial environments and enhancing detection accuracy. Addressing the issue where existing few-shot defect detection methods are prone to compromised feature representation under varying defect scales, this study proposes a distance-guided prototype network (DGPN) with explicit meta learning. Building upon the prototype network, our method leverages distance information between normal and anomalous image features to guide feature transformation and fusion processes. An attention gating block (AGB) is introduced to convert distance representation vectors into feature maps while enhancing the capture capability for fine-grained targets. A multiscale feature fusion module (MSFF) is proposed to further strengthen the network’s ability to extract multiscale features and semantic information. Additionally, an upsample fusion module (UF) is designed to fully integrate and exchange multiscale contextual information between shallow and deep layers, decoding semantic information and spatial details to improve the precision of small defect detection. Extensive experiments on Industrial-5i, Visa, and a self-built chip dataset validate the superiority of the proposed method and the practical applicability.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+
from $39.99 /Month
  • Starting from 10 chapters or articles per month
  • Access and download chapters and articles from more than 300k books and 2,500 journals
  • Cancel anytime
View plans

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

References

  • Chang, Z., Lu, Y., Ran, X., Gao, X., & Wang, X. (2023). Few-shot semantic segmentation: A review on recent approaches. Neural Computing and Applications, 35, 18251–18275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, H., Yu, Y., Dong, Y., Lu, Z., Li, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2024). Multi-content interaction network for few-shot segmentation. ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications, 20, 177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Finn C., Abbeel P., & Levine S. (2017) Model-agnostic meta-learning for fast adaptation of deep networks. In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), PMLR, 2017, pp. 1126–1135.

  • Gong, L., Zhang, F., Zhao, Y., & Duan, J. (2026). Frequency-aware and global-local selective attention network for laser welding spot detection. Neurocomputing, 678, Article 122187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gong, Y., Wang, X., Zhou, C., Ge, M., Liu, C., & Zhang, X. (2025). Human-machine knowledge hybrid augmentation method for surface defect detection based few-data learning. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 36, 1723–1742.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ha, T., Hwang, C., & Jeong, J. (2026). CLIP-MDC: CLIP encoder based multimodal defect classification with synthetic anomaly generation for real-time surface defect detection. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-025-02773-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hou, Y., Fan, H., Chen, Y., & Liu, G. (2025). A chip inspection system based on a multiscale subarea attention network. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 36, 4039–4053.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hu, W., Zhang, F., Zhao, Y., & Duan, J. (2026). Physics knowledge-inspired scattering neural representation for micro-adhesive-spot segmentation under complex backgrounds. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 22(6), 5287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huang, Q., Zhang, F., Zhao, Y., & Duan, J. (2025). Frequency-domain multi-scale Kolmogorov-Arnold representation attention network for mixed-type wafer defect recognition. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 144, Article 110121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li X., Wei T., Chen Y. P., Tai Y.W., & Tang C.K. (2020) FSS-1000: A 1000-Class dataset for few-shot segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 2869–2878.

  • Li G., Jampani V., Lara L. S., Sun D., Kim J., & Kim J. (2021) Adaptive prototype learning and allocation for few-shot segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 8334–8343.

  • Li C. L., Sohn K., Yoon J., & Pfister T. (2021) Cutpaste: Self-supervised learning for anomaly detection and localization. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 9664–9674.

  • Li, G., Peng, F., Wu, Z., Wang, S., & Xu, R. Y. D. (2024). ODCL: An object disentanglement and contrastive learning model for few-shot industrial defect detection. IEEE Sensors Journal, 24(11), 18568–18577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, X., Fan, Z., Liu, Q., & Wan, X. (2025). DSP-YOLO: An improved YOLO11-based method for steel surface defect detection. Measurement Science and Technology, 36(9), Article 096201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, K., Yang, Y., Yang, X., Wang, J., Liu, W., & Chen, H. (2025a). Multi-level joint distributed alignment-based domain adaptation for cross-scenario strip defect recognition. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 36, 2373–2386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, T., Li, B., Jin, X., Shi, Y., Li, Q., & Wei, X. (2025b). Exploring few-shot defect segmentation in general industrial scenarios with metric learning and vision foundation models. Optics and Laser Technology, 192, Article 114078.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lu Y., Yu F., Reddy M., & Wang Y.(2020) Few-shot scene-adaptive anomaly detection. In Computer Vision-ECCV 2020: 16th European Conference, Glasgow, UK, 2020, pp. 125–141.

  • Ma, Y., Yin, J., Huang, F., & Li, Q. (2024). Surface defect inspection of industrial products with object detection deep networks: A systematic review. Artificial Intelligence Review, 57, 333.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Min J., Kang D., & Cho M.(2021) Hypercorrelation squeeze for few-shot segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).

  • Shaban A., Bansal S., Liu Z., Essa I., & Boots B.(2017) One-shot learning for semantic segmentation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.03410, 2017.

  • Shi, X., Cui, Z., Zhang, S., Cheng, M., He, L., & Tang, X. (2022). Multi-similarity based hyperrelation network for few-shot segmentation. IET Image Processing, 17, 204–214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shi, X., Zhang, S., Cheng, M., He, L., Tang, X., & Cui, Z. (2023). Few-shot semantic segmentation for industrial defect recognition. Computers in Industry, 148, Article 103901.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Song, K., Feng, H., Cao, T., Cui, W., & Yan, Y. (2024). MFANet: Multifeature aggregation network for cross-granularity few-shot seamless steel tubes surface defect segmentation. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 20(7), 9725–9735.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sung F., Yang Y., Zhang L., Xiang T., Torr P. H. S., & Hospedales T. M. (2018) Learning to compare: relation network for few-shot learning. In Proc. IEEE/CVF Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR), pp. 1199–1208.

  • Tang, C., Yi, J., Chen, Y., Wu, X., & Xiong, W. (2025). Bidirectional consistent hypercorrelation network for cross-domain few-shot segmentation. Knowledge-Based Systems, 331, Article 114866.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang K., Liew J. H., Zou Y., Zhou D., & Feng J. (2019) Panet: Few-shot image semantic segmentation with prototype alignment. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pp. 9197–9206.

  • Wang, H., Li, Z., & Wang, H. (2022). Few-shot steel surface defect detection. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement. https://doi.org/10.1109/tim.2021.3128208

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, S., Chen, H., Liu, K., Zhou, Y., & Feng, H. (2023). Meta-FSDet: A meta-learning based detector for few-shot defects of photovoltaic modules. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 34, 3413–3427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, Y., Khan, W. A., & Chung, S. H. (2024). Few-shot defect detection of catheter products via enlarged scale feature pyramid and contrastive proposal memory bank. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 20(11), 13036–13046.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu Z., Shi X., Lin G., & Cai J. (2021) Learning meta-class memory for few-shot semantic segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pp. 517–526.

  • Xiao, X., Zhao, Y., Zhang, F., Luo, B., Yu, L., Chen, B., & Yang, C. (2023). BASeg: Boundary aware semantic segmentation for autonomous driving. Neural Networks, 157, 460–470.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xue, J., Gao, B., Liu, G., Zhang, Y., Woo, W. L., Yang, Y., & Yu, Y. (2023). Memory linked knowledge domain transfer few-shot learning for thermography nondestructive evaluation system. Infrared Physics & Technology, 132, Article 104718.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang B., Liu C., Zhang L., & Li X. (2020) Prototype mixture models for few-shot semantic segmentation. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)

  • Zhang H., Wu Z., Wang Z., Chen Z., & Jiang Y.(2023) Prototypical residual networks for anomaly detection and localization. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 16281–16291.

  • Zhang, F., Gong, L., Lin, S., & Zhao, Y. (2026b). Memory guided dual discrepancy network with domain adaptation for few-shot anomaly detection. Expert Systems with Applications, 314, Article 131711.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, F., Hu, H., Zou, B., & Luo, M. (2025b). M4Net: Multi-level multi-patch multi-receptive multi-dimensional attention network for infrared small target detection. Neural Networks, 183, Article 107026.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, F., Hu, W., Wang, Y., & Duan, J. (2026a). Dynamic background-guided asymmetric knowledge distillation network for 3D defect detection. Journal of Manufacturing Processes, 160, 185–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, F., Lv, Q., Pan, B., & Wang, Y. (2025a). Boundary semantic interactive aggregation network for scene segmentation. Expert Systems with Applications, 272, Article 126754.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, F., Pan, B., Wang, Y., Zhou, C., Zhao, Y., & Duan, J. (2026c). High-frequency semantic hierarchical dynamic feature fusion network for chip surface defect detection. Measurement Science and Technology, 37, Article 125401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhong, S., Zhang, F., & Duan, J. (2023). Context-guided reverse attention network with multiscale aggregation for infrared small target detection. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 16, 9725.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhong, S., Zhou, H., Yan, Y., Zhang, F., & Duan, J. (2024). Asymmetric convolutional multi-level attention network for micro-lens segmentation. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 133, Article 108355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, X., Zhang, Y., Liu, Z., Jiang, Z., Ren, Z., Mi, T., & Zhou, S. (2025). IFIFusion: An independent feature information fusion model for surface defect detection. Information Fusion, 120, Article 103039.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zou T., Xiong S., Yao R., & Rong Y. (2025) Balancing conservatism and aggressiveness: prototype-affinity hybrid network for few-shot segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), pp. 20561–20571.

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFF0504904), Key Research and Development Plan Program of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2023GK2021), and the Project of State Key Laboratory of Precision Manufacturing for Extreme Service Performance of Central South University (Grant No. ZZYJKT2024-09).

Funding

National Key R & D Program of China,2024YFF0504904, Ji’an Duan, Key R & D Plan Program of Hunan Province, 2023GK2021, Yuqian Zhao, Project of State Key Laboratory of Precision Manufacturing for Extreme Service Performance of Central South University,ZZYJKT2024-09, Fan Zhang.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yun Wang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors indicated that they have no conflict of interest with this work.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhang, F., Gong, L., Zhao, Y. et al. Distance-guided prototype network for few-shot vision-based industrial defect detection. J Intell Manuf (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-026-02960-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-026-02960-x

Keywords