# Multiscale Structure Guided Diffusion for Image Deblurring

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.01789 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01789/

## Key facts

- Cited by 77 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 82 of its 107 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Dec 2022.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 82)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [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)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04802/) (2016)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07636/) (2021)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Demystifying MMD GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01401/) (2018)
- [Variational Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00630/) (2021)
- [CyCADA: Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03213/) (2017)
- [Improved Techniques for Training Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09011/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11793/) (2022)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [Multi-Stage Progressive Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02808/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 77)

- [Diffusion Models in Low-Level Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11138/) (2024)
- [IMPRINT: Generative Object Compositing by Learning Identity-Preserving Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10701/) (2024)
- [Relightful Harmonization: Lighting-aware Portrait Background Replacement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06886/) (2023)
- [Diff-Plugin: Revitalizing Details for Diffusion-based Low-level Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00644/) (2024)
- [RestoreAgent: Autonomous Image Restoration Agent via Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18035/) (2024)
- [UniRestore: Unified Perceptual and Task-Oriented Image Restoration Model Using Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13134/) (2025)
- [Efficient Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey from Principles to Practices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11795/) (2024)
- [CoDi: Conditional Diffusion Distillation for Higher-Fidelity and Faster Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01407/) (2023)
- [SPIRE: Semantic Prompt-Driven Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11595/) (2023)
- [Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15736/) (2023)
- [Bigger is not Always Better: Scaling Properties of Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01367/) (2024)
- [ID-Blau: Image Deblurring by Implicit Diffusion-based reBLurring AUgmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10998/) (2023)
- [Deblur4DGS: 4D Gaussian Splatting from Blurry Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06424/) (2024)
- [VIDiff: Translating Videos via Multi-Modal Instructions with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18837/) (2023)
- [Plug-and-Play image restoration with Stochastic deNOising REgularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01779/) (2024)
- [PICTURE: PhotorealistIC virtual Try-on from UnconstRained dEsigns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04534/) (2023)
- [Sharing Key Semantics in Transformer Makes Efficient Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20008/) (2024)
- [DiffRetouch: Using Diffusion to Retouch on the Shoulder of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03757/) (2024)
- [DiET-GS: Diffusion Prior and Event Stream-Assisted Motion Deblurring 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24210/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Reflectance Map: Single-Image Stochastic Inverse Rendering of Illumination and Reflectance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04529/) (2023)
- [PostCast: Generalizable Postprocessing for Precipitation Nowcasting via Unsupervised Blurriness Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05805/) (2024)
- [One-Step Diffusion Model for Image Motion-Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06537/) (2025)
- [DeblurDiff: Real-World Image Deblurring with Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03810/) (2025)
- [S-Diff: An Anisotropic Diffusion Model for Collaborative Filtering in Spectral Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00384/) (2024)
- [FLAIR: A Conditional Diffusion Framework with Applications to Face Video Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15445/) (2023)
- [Deep learning in motion deblurring: current status, benchmarks and future prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05055/) (2024)
- [Learning to Deblur Polarized Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18134/) (2024)
- [UniRes: Universal Image Restoration for Complex Degradations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05599/) (2025)
- [Kernel Density Steering: Inference-Time Scaling via Mode Seeking for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05604/) (2025)
- [BlurDM: A Blur Diffusion Model for Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03979/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DPMs) have recently been employed for image deblurring, formulated as an image-conditioned generation process that maps Gaussian noise to the high-quality image, conditioned on the blurry input. Image-conditioned DPMs (icDPMs) have shown more realistic results than regression-based methods when trained on pairwise in-domain data. However, their robustness in restoring images is unclear when presented with out-of-domain images as they do not impose specific degradation models or intermediate constraints. To this end, we introduce a simple yet effective multiscale structure guidance as an implicit bias that informs the icDPM about the coarse structure of the sharp image at the intermediate layers. This guided formulation leads to a significant improvement of the deblurring results, particularly on unseen domain. The guidance is extracted from the latent space of a regression network trained to predict the clean-sharp target at multiple lower resolutions, thus maintaining the most salient sharp structures. With both the blurry input and multiscale guidance, the icDPM model can better understand the blur and recover the clean image. We evaluate a single-dataset trained model on diverse datasets and demonstrate more robust deblurring results with fewer artifacts on unseen data. Our method outperforms existing baselines, achieving state-of-the-art perceptual quality while keeping competitive distortion metrics.