Natural Image Reconstruction from fMRI using Deep Learning: A Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
With the advent of brain imaging techniques and machine learning tools, much effort has been devoted to building computational models to capture the encoding of visual information in the human brain. One of the most challenging brain decoding tasks is the accurate reconstruction of the perceived natural images from brain activities measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this work, we survey the most recent deep learning methods for natural image reconstruction from fMRI. We examine these methods in terms of architectural design, benchmark datasets, and evaluation metrics and present a fair performance evaluation across standardized evaluation metrics. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limitations of existing studies and present potential future directions.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 26 of its 84 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Oct 2021.
Builds on
26 of 84 references.
References · 26
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14 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 3; 2024: 2; 2025: 2; 2026: 1.
9 papers.
- 2022Mind Reader: Reconstructing complex images from brain activitiescited by 85
- 2023MindDiffuser: Controlled Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity with Semantic and Structural Diffusioncited by 47
- 2024Psychometry: An Omnifit Model for Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activitycited by 22
- 2025ViEEG: Hierarchical Visual Neural Representation for EEG Brain Decodingcited by 5
- 2025SYNAPSE: Synergizing an Adapter and Finetuning for High-Fidelity EEG Synthesis from a CLIP-Aligned Encodercited by 1
- 2023MindDiffuser: Controlled Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity with Semantic and Structural Diffusioncited by 0
- 2023On Functional Activations in Deep Neural Networkscited by 0
- 2024Optimized two-stage AI-based Neural Decoding for Enhanced Visual Stimulus Reconstruction from fMRI Datacited by 0
- 2026Lost in Visual Translation: A VLM-Assisted Perceptual-Semantic Coherence Framework for EEG-to-Image Reconstructioncited by 0
- 2026Lost in Visual Translation: A VLM-Assisted Perceptual-Semantic Coherence Framework for EEG-to-Image Reconstruction14 Jul 2026
- 2025SYNAPSE: Synergizing an Adapter and Finetuning for High-Fidelity EEG Synthesis from a CLIP-Aligned Encoder11 Nov 2025
- 2025ViEEG: Hierarchical Visual Neural Representation for EEG Brain Decoding18 May 2025
- 2024Optimized two-stage AI-based Neural Decoding for Enhanced Visual Stimulus Reconstruction from fMRI Data17 Dec 2024
- 2024Psychometry: An Omnifit Model for Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity29 Mar 2024
- 2023On Functional Activations in Deep Neural Networks17 Nov 2023
- 2023MindDiffuser: Controlled Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity with Semantic and Structural Diffusion8 Aug 2023
- 2023MindDiffuser: Controlled Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity with Semantic and Structural Diffusion24 Mar 2023
- 2022Mind Reader: Reconstructing complex images from brain activities30 Sep 2022