# Learning Fixed Points in Generative Adversarial Networks: From Image-to-Image Translation to Disease Detection and Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.06965 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06965/

## Key facts

- Cited by 38 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 16 Aug 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Diffusion Models for Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07804/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models for Medical Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04306/) (2022)
- [Image-to-Image Translation: Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08629/) (2021)
- [Delving into Masked Autoencoders for Multi-Label Thorax Disease Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12843/) (2022)
- [Towards Generalizable Tumor Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19470/) (2024)
- [AbdomenAtlas: A Large-Scale, Detailed-Annotated, & Multi-Center Dataset for Efficient Transfer Learning and Open Algorithmic Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16697/) (2024)
- [Reverse Engineering of Generative Models: Inferring Model Hyperparameters from Generated Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07873/) (2021)
- [SQUID: Deep Feature In-Painting for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13495/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models for Counterfactual Generation and Anomaly Detection in Brain Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02062/) (2023)
- [A Unified Conditional Disentanglement Framework for Multimodal Brain MR Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05434/) (2021)
- [SPatchGAN: A Statistical Feature Based Discriminator for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16219/) (2021)
- [GAN-based Facial Attribute Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12683/) (2022)
- [Data synthesis and adversarial networks: A review and meta-analysis in cancer imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09543/) (2021)
- [FreeTumor: Advance Tumor Segmentation via Large-Scale Tumor Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01264/) (2024)
- [Exploiting Structural Consistency of Chest Anatomy for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in Radiography Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08689/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Visual Sensory Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07006/) (2022)
- [Counterfactual Image Synthesis for Discovery of Personalized Predictive Image Markers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.02311/) (2022)
- [Is Image-to-Image Translation the Panacea for Multimodal Image Registration? A Comparative Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16262/) (2021)
- [Brainomaly: Unsupervised Neurologic Disease Detection Utilizing Unannotated T1-weighted Brain MR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09200/) (2023)
- [Information-containing Adversarial Perturbation for Combating Facial Manipulation Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11625/) (2023)
- [Contrastive Counterfactual Visual Explanations With Overdetermination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14556/) (2021)
- [Cross-Modality Neuroimage Synthesis: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06997/) (2022)
- [HealthyGAN: Learning from Unannotated Medical Images to Detect Anomalies Associated with Human Disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01822/) (2022)
- [ID-Guard: A Universal Framework for Combating Facial Manipulation via Breaking Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13349/) (2024)
- [See More, Change Less: Anatomy-Aware Diffusion for Contrast Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07251/) (2025)
- [A Framework for Generalizing Critical Heat Flux Detection Models Using Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09107/) (2022)
- [Weakly-Supervised Cloud Detection with Fixed-Point GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11879/) (2021)
- [Domain-knowledge Inspired Pseudo Supervision (DIPS) for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation Models to Support Cross-Domain Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10310/) (2023)
- [Spatial-aware Attention Generative Adversarial Network for Semi-supervised Anomaly Detection in Medical Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12872/) (2024)
- [Pancreatic Tumor Segmentation as Anomaly Detection in CT Images Using Denoising Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02653/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have ushered in a revolution in image-to-image translation. The development and proliferation of GANs raises an interesting question: can we train a GAN to remove an object, if present, from an image while otherwise preserving the image? Specifically, can a GAN "virtually heal" anyone by turning his medical image, with an unknown health status (diseased or healthy), into a healthy one, so that diseased regions could be revealed by subtracting those two images? Such a task requires a GAN to identify a minimal subset of target pixels for domain translation, an ability that we call fixed-point translation, which no GAN is equipped with yet. Therefore, we propose a new GAN, called Fixed-Point GAN, trained by (1) supervising same-domain translation through a conditional identity loss, and (2) regularizing cross-domain translation through revised adversarial, domain classification, and cycle consistency loss. Based on fixed-point translation, we further derive a novel framework for disease detection and localization using only image-level annotation. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state of the art in multi-domain image-to-image translation and that it surpasses predominant weakly-supervised localization methods in both disease detection and localization. Implementation is available at https://github.com/jlianglab/Fixed-Point-GAN.