mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Inverse problems and image restoration

1,043 papers8 this weekMedium confidence in this grouping: mostly one topic, with blurry edgesMedium confidence in this grouping: mostly one topic, with blurry edges · About

Keywords: image, diffusion, restoration, super-resolution, images

Key facts. Inverse problems and image restoration: 1,043 papers on arXiv since 2021 (data through 7 Oct 2026). 330 of its 1,043 mapped papers (32%) cite “Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models” (2022, arXiv 2201.11793). 310 of its 1,043 mapped papers (30%) cite “Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems” (2022, arXiv 2209.14687). 34 new papers 17 Sep–7 Oct.

What’s new

17 Sep – 7 Oct 2026

34 new papers, 17 Sep – 7 Oct; 8 this week.

  1. This week · 8
  2. Kinetic Langevin Meets Split Gibbs: Accelerated Posterior Sampling for Imaging Inverse Problems with Diffusion Priors
  3. Iris-3B: Going Beyond the Latent with Pixel-Space Diffusion Training, Conversion and Fine-Tuning also fits: 3D, point cloud and scene generation
  4. Noise, Denoise, Correct: MCMC Posterior Sampling with Diffusion Priors in Three Steps also fits: Diffusion foundations and sampling
  5. DISRQAD: Diffusion Image Super-Resolution Quality Assessment Dataset and Benchmark
  6. LiDAR Resolution Recovery via Foundation-Model-Guided Diffusion
  7. Energy-Conditioned Noise Schedule and Whitening for Spectral Diffusion also fits: Diffusion foundations and sampling
  8. Frequency-Decoupled Diffusion Guidance for Non-Blind Image Deblurring
  9. Diffusion Meets Unrolling: Compressive SAR Image Reconstruction with Interleaved Learned Corrections
  10. Earlier · 26
  11. Robust Ensemble Guidance for Scientific Inverse Problems
  12. DriftSR: One-Step Real-World Image Super-Resolution via Distribution Drifting
All 34
  1. Measuring Effective Data Resolution in Guided Diffusion Posteriors also fits: Diffusion foundations and sampling
  2. Dynamic Time Step Prediction in Inverse Heat Dissipation for Blur-Like Image Restoration Tasks
  3. Consecutive Posterior Fusion for Diffusive Recovery of Unobservable Image Structures
  4. Domain-adaptive Zero-Shot Image Enhancement via Locality-Constrained Diffusion Guidance also fits: Image generation, text-to-image and editing
  5. GPARA: Graph-Posterior-Aligned Refinement and Active Acquisition for Grounding Diffusion Priors
  6. SNaP: One-Step Posterior Sampling for Noisy Inverse Problems
  7. CLIMB-flow: Coupled Linear Inverse posterior sampling via Multiscale-Based flow
  8. Fill2SR: Repurposing Inpainting Diffusion Transformers for Real-World Super-Resolution
  9. In-Token Learning for High-Fidelity Image Restoration via Diffusion Transformers
  10. Structured Residual Connectivity Matters for Diffusion Transformers also fits: Diffusion foundations and sampling
  11. Perturb-and-Solve: Efficient Learned-Operator Conditioning for Latent Diffusion Inverse Problems
  12. Residual Diffusion Implicit Models
  13. ANaLOG: Anisotropic Native-Latent Operator Guidance for Solving Inverse Problems
  14. ContraFM-S2O: Flow Matching-Based One-step SAR-to-Optical Image Translation Model with Contrastive Learning
  15. PhoenixSR: Generative Heterogeneous Distillation Unleashes Efficient Models for Real-World Super-Resolution
  16. Learning to Replace MCMC in Split-Gibbs Diffusion Posterior Sampling via Deep Unfolding
  17. FB-GDM: Fully-Bayesian Guided Diffusion Models for High-Dimensional Linear Inverse Problems via Unsupervised Variational Inference
  18. Generative Atmospheric Super-Resolution from Heterogeneous In Situ Observations through Composable Interfaces
  19. PEEL-DDPM: Physics-Enabled Evidential Learning for the Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model also fits: Diffusion foundations and sampling
  20. Zero-Shot Object Removal via Attention Masking, Latent Anchoring, and Refinement also fits: Image generation, text-to-image and editing
  21. PixelDiT2: Representation-Grounded Pixel Diffusion Transformers
  22. Classification-oriented adaptive sensing via posterior sampling also fits: Diffusion foundations and sampling
  23. Geometry-Aware Diffusion Guidance via Curvature-Adaptive Tubular Correction also fits: 3D, point cloud and scene generation
  24. FlowSGS: Improving Flow Matching Priors for Inverse Imaging with Stochastic Interpolants also fits: Flow matching, time series and science

Foundations

Most cited by papers here

  1. Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models2022cited by 330 here
  2. Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems2022cited by 310 here
  3. Zero-Shot Image Restoration Using Denoising Diffusion Null-Space Model2022cited by 227 here
  4. Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolution2023cited by 221 here
  5. ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shifting2023cited by 155 here

Lineage

The papers this direction builds on, oldest first.

Each paper on the line cites the one before.

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 785 here
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 446 here
  3. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 190 here
  4. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 365 here
  5. 2021Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 154 here
  6. 2022Denoising Diffusion Restoration Modelscited by 330 here
  7. 2022Improving Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems using Manifold Constraintscited by 140 here
  8. 2022Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problemscited by 310 here
  9. 2022Zero-Shot Image Restoration Using Denoising Diffusion Null-Space Modelcited by 227 here
  10. 2023Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 221 here
  11. 2023ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shiftingcited by 155 here
  12. 2023Pixel-Aware Stable Diffusion for Realistic Image Super-resolution and Personalized Stylizationcited by 137 here
  13. 2023SeeSR: Towards Semantics-Aware Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 149 here
11 more it builds on, not in this chain
  1. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 413 here
  2. 2021ILVR: Conditioning Method for Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 133 here
  3. 2021Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Modelscited by 129 here
  4. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 590 here
  5. 2022RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 142 here
  6. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 136 here
  7. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 146 here
  8. 2022Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidancecited by 137 here
  9. 2023Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 223 here
  10. 2023Denoising Diffusion Models for Plug-and-Play Image Restorationcited by 139 here
  11. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 118 here

The 24 most cited of 2,057.

Browse

30 of 1,043, ranked 6–35

  1. 6SeeSR: Towards Semantics-Aware Real-World Image Super-Resolution2023149
  2. 7Improving Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems using Manifold Constraints2022140
  3. 8Denoising Diffusion Models for Plug-and-Play Image Restoration2023139
  4. 9Pixel-Aware Stable Diffusion for Realistic Image Super-resolution and Personalized Stylization2023137
  5. 10DiffBIR: Towards Blind Image Restoration with Generative Diffusion Prior2023115
  6. 11SRDiff: Single Image Super-Resolution with Diffusion Probabilistic Models2021114
  7. 12One-Step Effective Diffusion Network for Real-World Image Super-Resolution2024113
  8. 13SinSR: Diffusion-Based Image Super-Resolution in a Single Step2023110
  9. 14Come-Closer-Diffuse-Faster: Accelerating Conditional Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems through Stochastic Contraction2021103
  10. 15Deblurring via Stochastic Refinement2021100
All 30
  1. 16A Variational Perspective on Solving Inverse Problems with Diffusion Models202397
  2. 17Generative Diffusion Prior for Unified Image Restoration and Enhancement202389
  3. 18DiffIR: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Restoration202387
  4. 19Solving Inverse Problems with Latent Diffusion Models via Hard Data Consistency202382
  5. 20Solving Linear Inverse Problems Provably via Posterior Sampling with Latent Diffusion Models202378
  6. 21Improving Diffusion Inverse Problem Solving with Decoupled Noise Annealing202469
  7. 22Restoring Vision in Adverse Weather Conditions with Patch-Based Denoising Diffusion Models202263
  8. 23A Survey on Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems202457
  9. 24Inversion by Direct Iteration: An Alternative to Denoising Diffusion for Image Restoration202357
  10. 25Implicit Diffusion Models for Continuous Super-Resolution202357
  11. 26Score-Based Diffusion Models as Principled Priors for Inverse Imaging202356
  12. 27Parallel Diffusion Models of Operator and Image for Blind Inverse Problems202254
  13. 28Principled Probabilistic Imaging using Diffusion Models as Plug-and-Play Priors202447
  14. 29Pixel-level and Semantic-level Adjustable Super-resolution: A Dual-LoRA Approach202445
  15. 30DifFace: Blind Face Restoration with Diffused Error Contraction202245
  16. 31TSD-SR: One-Step Diffusion with Target Score Distillation for Real-World Image Super-Resolution202444
  17. 32Arbitrary-steps Image Super-resolution via Diffusion Inversion202444
  18. 33Upscale-A-Video: Temporal-Consistent Diffusion Model for Real-World Video Super-Resolution202344
  19. 34Provably Robust Score-Based Diffusion Posterior Sampling for Plug-and-Play Image Reconstruction202439
  20. 35Beyond First-Order Tweedie: Solving Inverse Problems using Latent Diffusion202337