Image data augmentation constitutes a critical methodology in modern computer vision tasks, since it can facilitate towards enhancing the diversity and quality of training datasets; thereby, improving the performance and robustness of machine learning models in downstream tasks. In parallel, augmentation approaches can also be used for editing/modifying a given image in a context- and semantics-aware way. Diffusion Models (DMs), which comprise one of the most recent and highly promising classes of methods in the field of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), have emerged as a powerful tool for image data augmentation, capable of generating realistic and diverse images by learning the underlying data distribution. The current study realizes a systematic, comprehensive and in-depth review of DM-based approaches for image augmentation, covering a wide range of strategies, tasks and applications. In particular, a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental principles, model architectures and training strategies of DMs is initially performed. Subsequently, a taxonomy of the relevant image augmentation methods is introduced, focusing on techniques regarding semantic manipulation, personalization and adaptation, and application-specific augmentation tasks. Then, performance assessment methodologies and respective evaluation metrics are analyzed. Finally, current challenges and future research directions in the field are discussed.

图像数据增强在计算机视觉任务中是一种重要的方法，它可以增强训练数据集的多样性和质量，从而提高机器学习模型在下游任务中的性能和鲁棒性。本研究对基于扩散模型的图像增强方法进行了系统、全面、深入的综述，涵盖了广泛的策略、任务和应用。具体而言，首先对扩散模型的基本原理、模型架构和训练策略进行了全面分析。随后，引入了相关图像增强方法的分类方法，重点介绍了语义操作、个性化和适应性以及特定应用增强任务的技术。然后，分析了性能评估方法和相应的评估指标。最后，讨论了当前领域面临的挑战和未来的研究方向。

图像数据增强的扩散模型进展：方法、模型、评估指标和未来研究方向综述