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A Comprehensive Survey on Data Augmentation

Publication ,  Journal Article
Wang, Z; Wang, P; Liu, K; Fu, Y; Lu, CT; Aggarwal, CC; Pei, J; Zhou, Y
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
January 1, 2026

Data augmentation is a series of techniques that generate high-quality artificial data by manipulating existing data samples. By leveraging data augmentation techniques, AI models can achieve significantly improved applicability in tasks involving scarce or imbalanced datasets, thereby substantially enhancing AI models’ generalization capabilities. Existing literature surveys only focus on a certain type of specific modality data and categorize these methods from modality-specific and operation-centric perspectives, which lacks a consistent summary of data augmentation methods across multiple modalities and limits the comprehension of how existing data samples serve the data augmentation process. To bridge this gap, this survey proposes a more enlightening taxonomy that encompasses data augmentation techniques for different common data modalities by investigating how to take advantage of the intrinsic relationship between and within instances. Additionally, it categorizes data augmentation methods across five data modalities through a unified inductive approach.

Duke Scholars

Published In

IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering

DOI

EISSN

1558-2191

ISSN

1041-4347

Publication Date

January 1, 2026

Volume

38

Issue

1

Start / End Page

47 / 66

Related Subject Headings

  • Information Systems
  • 46 Information and computing sciences
  • 08 Information and Computing Sciences
 

Citation

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Wang, Z., Wang, P., Liu, K., Fu, Y., Lu, C. T., Aggarwal, C. C., … Zhou, Y. (2026). A Comprehensive Survey on Data Augmentation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 38(1), 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2025.3622600
Wang, Z., P. Wang, K. Liu, Y. Fu, C. T. Lu, C. C. Aggarwal, J. Pei, and Y. Zhou. “A Comprehensive Survey on Data Augmentation.” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 38, no. 1 (January 1, 2026): 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2025.3622600.
Wang Z, Wang P, Liu K, Fu Y, Lu CT, Aggarwal CC, et al. A Comprehensive Survey on Data Augmentation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 2026 Jan 1;38(1):47–66.
Wang, Z., et al. “A Comprehensive Survey on Data Augmentation.” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 38, no. 1, Jan. 2026, pp. 47–66. Scopus, doi:10.1109/TKDE.2025.3622600.
Wang Z, Wang P, Liu K, Fu Y, Lu CT, Aggarwal CC, Pei J, Zhou Y. A Comprehensive Survey on Data Augmentation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. 2026 Jan 1;38(1):47–66.

Published In

IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering

DOI

EISSN

1558-2191

ISSN

1041-4347

Publication Date

January 1, 2026

Volume

38

Issue

1

Start / End Page

47 / 66

Related Subject Headings

  • Information Systems
  • 46 Information and computing sciences
  • 08 Information and Computing Sciences