Structure-Aware Noise Scheduling for Fixed-View Visual Sensor Reconstruction
Fixed-view visual sensors require normal-image reconstruction that preserves structural detail while exposing a local deviation in a residual map. Standard denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPMs) use spatially uniform corruption. We study an image-derived, structure-aware noise schedule for reference-image reconstruction, where the input image is available and the same importance map can be fixed in the forward and reverse processes. A matched three-seed diagnostic further isolates the effect of the semantic-training/gradient-reverse map substitution and of a lower bound on local noise. Map consistency recovers much of the unconditional FID loss, but neither it nor the attenuation floor yields a universal advantage over DDPM. The six-category MVTec AD residual study is likewise category dependent: the gradient/edge special case improves selected texture-localization outcomes but degrades several object-level outcomes. We therefore present the method as a reconstruction diagnostic, not as a competitive industrial anomaly detector or a universally superior generator.