mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Medical Diffusion: Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Medical Image Generation

arXiv 2211.03364 ↗First posted 7 Nov 2022eess.IV cs.CV cs.LGcited by 54

On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation

Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in computer vision have shown promising results in image generation. Diffusion probabilistic models in particular have generated realistic images from textual input, as demonstrated by DALL-E 2, Imagen and Stable Diffusion. However, their use in medicine, where image data typically comprises three-dimensional volumes, has not been systematically evaluated. Synthetic images may play a crucial role in privacy preserving artificial intelligence and can also be used to augment small datasets. Here we show that diffusion probabilistic models can synthesize high quality medical imaging data, which we show for Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) images. We provide quantitative measurements of their performance through a reader study with two medical experts who rated the quality of the synthesized images in three categories: Realistic image appearance, anatomical correctness and consistency between slices. Furthermore, we demonstrate that synthetic images can be used in a self-supervised pre-training and improve the performance of breast segmentation models when data is scarce (dice score 0.91 vs. 0.95 without vs. with synthetic data). The code is publicly available on GitHub: https://github.com/FirasGit/medicaldiffusion.

Key facts. Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 16 of its 35 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2022.

Builds on

16 of 35 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2022Brain Imaging Generation with Latent Diffusion Models15 Sep

Other references · 15

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  4. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latentscited by 6,539
  5. 2022Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understandingcited by 6,322
  6. 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,650
  7. 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,229
  8. 2022Video Diffusion Modelscited by 2,280
  9. 2019Generating Diverse High-Fidelity Images with VQ-VAE-2cited by 1,376
  10. 2021Self-Supervised Pre-Training of Swin Transformers for 3D Medical Image Analysiscited by 418
  11. 2022Long Video Generation with Time-Agnostic VQGAN and Time-Sensitive Transformercited by 244
  12. 2019Generation of 3D Brain MRI Using Auto-Encoding Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 65
3 more
  1. 2022Diffusion Deformable Model for 4D Temporal Medical Image Generationcited by 65
  2. 2019Synthesizing Diverse Lung Nodules Wherever Massively: 3D Multi-Conditional GAN-based CT Image Augmentation for Object Detectioncited by 29
  3. 20213D fluorescence microscopy data synthesis for segmentation and benchmarkingcited by 8

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 18; 2024: 18; 2025: 11; 2026: 6.

54 papers.

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  1. 2025Inference-Time Scaling for Diffusion Models beyond Scaling Denoising Stepscited by 225
  2. 2023Generative models improve fairness of medical classifiers under distribution shiftscited by 90
  3. 2022RoentGen: Vision-Language Foundation Model for Chest X-ray Generationcited by 89
  4. 2024A Comprehensive Survey of Foundation Models in Medicinecited by 56
  5. 2023Deep Learning Approaches for Data Augmentation in Medical Imaging: A Reviewcited by 48
  6. 2023Make-A-Volume: Leveraging Latent Diffusion Models for Cross-Modality 3D Brain MRI Synthesiscited by 43
  7. 2023MedSyn: Text-guided Anatomy-aware Synthesis of High-Fidelity 3D CT Imagescited by 41
  8. 20243D MedDiffusion: A 3D Medical Latent Diffusion Model for Controllable and High-quality Medical Image Generationcited by 37
  9. 2023Memory-Efficient 3D Denoising Diffusion Models for Medical Image Processingcited by 30
  10. 2024Denoising Diffusion Models for 3D Healthy Brain Tissue Inpaintingcited by 22
  11. 2023Medical diffusion on a budget: Textual Inversion for medical image generationcited by 20
  12. 2024FairDiff: Fair Segmentation with Point-Image Diffusioncited by 15
38 more
  1. 2023Aligning Synthetic Medical Images with Clinical Knowledge using Human Feedbackcited by 14
  2. 2023Synthesising Rare Cataract Surgery Samples with Guided Diffusion Modelscited by 14
  3. 2024Generative Enhancement for 3D Medical Imagescited by 14
  4. 2023Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for Generation of Realistic Fully-Annotated Microscopy Image Data Setscited by 13
  5. 2024HiDiff: Hybrid Diffusion Framework for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 13
  6. 2024Advancing Text-Driven Chest X-Ray Generation with Policy-Based Reinforcement Learningcited by 10
  7. 2023A Survey of Emerging Applications of Diffusion Probabilistic Models in MRIcited by 9
  8. 2024Diff-Def: Diffusion-Generated Deformation Fields for Conditional Atlasescited by 8
  9. 2024Data Augmentation for Surgical Scene Segmentation with Anatomy-Aware Diffusion Modelscited by 8
  10. 2023Efficiently Training Vision Transformers on Structural MRI Scans for Alzheimer's Disease Detectioncited by 7
  11. 2023Generating 3D Brain Tumor Regions in MRI using Vector-Quantization Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 6
  12. 2024Vision-Language Synthetic Data Enhances Echocardiography Downstream Taskscited by 6
  13. 2023Importance of Aligning Training Strategy with Evaluation for Diffusion Models in 3D Multiclass Segmentationcited by 5
  14. 2023Shape-guided Conditional Latent Diffusion Models for Synthesising Brain Vasculaturecited by 5
  15. 2023A Recycling Training Strategy for Medical Image Segmentation with Diffusion Denoising Modelscited by 5
  16. 2026FlowLet: Conditional 3D Brain MRI Synthesis using Wavelet Flow Matchingcited by 5
  17. 2023SynFundus-1M: A High-quality Million-scale Synthetic fundus images Dataset with Fifteen Types of Annotationcited by 4
  18. 2024Brain Tumour Removing and Missing Modality Generation using 3D WDMcited by 4
  19. 2024FairDiffusion: Enhancing Equity in Latent Diffusion Models via Fair Bayesian Perturbationcited by 4
  20. 2025ItDPDM: Information-Theoretic Discrete Poisson Diffusion Modelcited by 4
  21. 2024METR: Image Watermarking with Large Number of Unique Messagescited by 3
  22. 2024Introducing SDICE: An Index for Assessing Diversity of Synthetic Medical Datasetscited by 3
  23. 2025DVG-Diffusion: Dual-View Guided Diffusion Model for CT Reconstruction from X-Rayscited by 3
  24. 2024MEDDAP: Medical Dataset Enhancement via Diversified Augmentation Pipelinecited by 2
  25. 2024Paired Diffusion: Generation of related, synthetic PET-CT-Segmentation scans using Linked Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 2
  26. 2024X-ray2CTPA: Leveraging Diffusion Models to Enhance Pulmonary Embolism Classificationcited by 2
  27. 2025VAP-Diffusion: Enriching Descriptions with MLLMs for Enhanced Medical Image Generationcited by 2
  28. 2023Video and Synthetic MRI Pre-training of 3D Vision Architectures for Neuroimage Analysiscited by 1
  29. 2023Non-Visible Light Data Synthesis and Application: A Case Study for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagerycited by 1
  30. 2025Layer Separation: Adjustable Joint Space Width Images Synthesis in Conventional Radiographycited by 1
  31. 2025Shifts in Doctors' Eye Movements Between Real and AI-Generated Medical Imagescited by 1
  32. 2025Computationally Efficient Diffusion Models in Medical Imaging: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 1
  33. 2025Point-Based Shape Representation Generation with a Correspondence-Preserving Diffusion Modelcited by 1
  34. 2026See and Fix the Flaws: Enabling VLMs and Diffusion Models to Comprehend Visual Artifacts via Agentic Data Synthesiscited by 1
  35. 2026WaveDiT: Distribution-Aware Wavelet Flow Matching for Efficient 3D Brain MRI Synthesiscited by 1
  36. 2024GaNDLF-Synth: A Framework to Democratize Generative AI for (Bio)Medical Imagingcited by 0
  37. 2025Bringing together invertible UNets with invertible attention modules for memory-efficient diffusion modelscited by 0
  38. 2025Towards Application Aligned Synthetic Surgical Image Synthesiscited by 0

50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)

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  1. 2022Diffusion Models for Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey
  2. 2022Spot the fake lungs: Generating Synthetic Medical Images using Neural Diffusion Models
  3. 2024Multi-Conditioned Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (mDDPM) for Medical Image Synthesis
  4. 2024Diffusion-Based Approaches in Medical Image Generation and Analysis
  5. 2024Analysing Diffusion Segmentation for Medical Images
  6. 2023DiffBoost: Enhancing Medical Image Segmentation via Text-Guided Diffusion Model
  7. 2023MAM-E: Mammographic synthetic image generation with diffusion models
  8. 2024Evaluating Utility of Memory Efficient Medical Image Generation: A Study on Lung Nodule Segmentation