# DOLCE: A Model-Based Probabilistic Diffusion Framework for Limited-Angle CT Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12340 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12340/

## Key facts

- Cited by 74 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 52 of its 103 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Nov 2022.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Medical imaging and segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/medical-imaging-and-segmentation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.11096/) (2018)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Variational Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00630/) (2021)
- [Improved Techniques for Training Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09011/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11793/) (2022)
- [ILVR: Conditioning Method for Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02938/) (2021)
- [Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08005/) (2021)
- [Improving Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems using Manifold Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00941/) (2022)
- [Plug-and-Play Image Restoration with Deep Denoiser Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13751/) (2020)
- [Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Inverse Problems in Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03679/) (2016)
- [Score-based diffusion models for accelerated MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05243/) (2021)
- [The Little Engine that Could: Regularization by Denoising (RED)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.02862/) (2016)
- [Come-Closer-Diffuse-Faster: Accelerating Conditional Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems through Stochastic Contraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05146/) (2021)
- [Learned Primal-dual Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06474/) (2017)
- [Deblurring via Stochastic Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02475/) (2021)
- [A Variational Perspective on Diffusion-Based Generative Models and Score Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02808/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 74)

- [Principled Probabilistic Imaging using Diffusion Models as Plug-and-Play Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18782/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models in Low-Level Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11138/) (2024)
- [R2-Gaussian: Rectifying Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Tomographic Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20693/) (2024)
- [Provable Probabilistic Imaging using Score-Based Generative Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10835/) (2023)
- [3D MedDiffusion: A 3D Medical Latent Diffusion Model for Controllable and High-quality Medical Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13059/) (2024)
- [Fast-DDPM: Fast Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for Medical Image-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14802/) (2024)
- [Conditional Image Synthesis with Diffusion Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19365/) (2024)
- [Data-Centric Foundation Models in Computational Healthcare: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02458/) (2024)
- [Differentiable Forward Projector for X-ray Computed Tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05801/) (2023)
- [Geometry-Aware Attenuation Learning for Sparse-View CBCT Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14739/) (2023)
- [Invertible Diffusion Models for Compressed Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17006/) (2024)
- [Implicit Neural Representations for Robust Joint Sparse-View CT Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02509/) (2024)
- [DiffuX2CT: Diffusion Learning to Reconstruct CT Images from Biplanar X-Rays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13545/) (2024)
- [Plug-and-Play Posterior Sampling under Mismatched Measurement and Prior Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03546/) (2023)
- [DIFR3CT: Latent Diffusion for Probabilistic 3D CT Reconstruction from Few Planar X-Rays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15118/) (2024)
- [Optical Flow Representation Alignment Mamba Diffusion Model for Medical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01647/) (2024)
- [SimuScope: Realistic Endoscopic Synthetic Dataset Generation through Surgical Simulation and Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02332/) (2024)
- [Generative Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging: Foundations, Progress, and Clinical Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09177/) (2025)
- [Assessing the capacity of a denoising diffusion probabilistic model to reproduce spatial context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10817/) (2023)
- [Model-corrected learned primal-dual models for fast limited-view photoacoustic tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01963/) (2023)
- [CT Reconstruction using Diffusion Posterior Sampling conditioned on a Nonlinear Measurement Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01464/) (2023)
- [Random Walks with Tweedie: A Unified View of Score-Based Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18702/) (2024)
- [FLAIR: A Conditional Diffusion Framework with Applications to Face Video Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15445/) (2023)
- [Plug-and-Play Priors as a Score-Based Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11108/) (2024)
- [Conformalized Generative Bayesian Imaging: An Uncertainty Quantification Framework for Computational Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07696/) (2025)
- [Advancing Limited-Angle CT Reconstruction Through Diffusion-Based Sinogram Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19385/) (2025)
- [GR-Gaussian: Graph-Based Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-View CT Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02408/) (2025)
- [RN-SDEs: Limited-Angle CT Reconstruction with Residual Null-Space Diffusion Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13930/) (2024)
- [DVG-Diffusion: Dual-View Guided Diffusion Model for CT Reconstruction from X-Rays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17804/) (2025)
- [FEAT: Full-Dimensional Efficient Attention Transformer for Medical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04956/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Limited-Angle Computed Tomography (LACT) is a non-destructive evaluation technique used in a variety of applications ranging from security to medicine. The limited angle coverage in LACT is often a dominant source of severe artifacts in the reconstructed images, making it a challenging inverse problem. We present DOLCE, a new deep model-based framework for LACT that uses a conditional diffusion model as an image prior. Diffusion models are a recent class of deep generative models that are relatively easy to train due to their implementation as image denoisers. DOLCE can form high-quality images from severely under-sampled data by integrating data-consistency updates with the sampling updates of a diffusion model, which is conditioned on the transformed limited-angle data. We show through extensive experimentation on several challenging real LACT datasets that, the same pre-trained DOLCE model achieves the SOTA performance on drastically different types of images. Additionally, we show that, unlike standard LACT reconstruction methods, DOLCE naturally enables the quantification of the reconstruction uncertainty by generating multiple samples consistent with the measured data.