Abstract
Simulation-based inference (SBI) has become a powerful approach to Bayesian inference in complex scientific models whose likelihoods are difficult or impossible to evaluate. Amortized SBI learns reusable inference models from simulated data, enabling rapid posterior inference for new observations, and modern generative models have made these models increasingly expressive. However, this reuse is limited to the prior distribution chosen during training, whereas scientific analyses often need revised priors as knowledge accumulates or alternative assumptions are tested. We introduce Spectra, a test-time adaptation method for diffusion-based SBI. Spectra uses an exact score-transport identity to obtain the adapted score from a frozen diffusion model in closed form for structured prior changes, without additional simulation or training. Across six SBI benchmarks, Spectra achieves accurate adaptation under strong prior shifts at low online sampling cost. This enables pretrained SBI models to incorporate updated prior information at test time.
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Publication details
- Journal
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- Open access
- Green open access
Cite this article
APA 7
Zhao, X., Scherf, N., Trampel, R., Pine, K. J., & Weiskopf, N. (2026). Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/spectra-exact-component-transport-for-test-time-prior-adaptation-in-simulation-based-inference
MLA 9
Zhao, Xin, et al. "Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/spectra-exact-component-transport-for-test-time-prior-adaptation-in-simulation-based-inference.
Chicago (author–date)
Zhao, Xin, Nico Scherf, Robert Trampel, Kerrin J. Pine, and Nikolaus Weiskopf. 2026. "Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/spectra-exact-component-transport-for-test-time-prior-adaptation-in-simulation-based-inference.
Harvard
Zhao, X., Scherf, N., Trampel, R., Pine, K. J. and Weiskopf, N. (2026) 'Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/spectra-exact-component-transport-for-test-time-prior-adaptation-in-simulation-based-inference.
Vancouver
Zhao X, Scherf N, Trampel R, Pine KJ, Weiskopf N. Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/spectra-exact-component-transport-for-test-time-prior-adaptation-in-simulation-based-inference
IEEE
X. Zhao, N. Scherf, R. Trampel, K. J. Pine, and N. Weiskopf, "Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/spectra-exact-component-transport-for-test-time-prior-adaptation-in-simulation-based-inference.