# Brain Diffuser: An End-to-End Brain Image to Brain Network Pipeline

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06410 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06410/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Perceiver: General Perception with Iterative Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03206/) (2021)
- [Score-based diffusion models for accelerated MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05243/) (2021)
- [Score-based Generative Modeling of Graphs via the System of Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02514/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models for Medical Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04306/) (2022)
- [Disease Prediction using Graph Convolutional Networks: Application to Autism Spectrum Disorder and Alzheimer's Disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01738/) (2018)
- [Fast Unsupervised Brain Anomaly Detection and Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03461/) (2022)
- [Distance Metric Learning using Graph Convolutional Networks: Application to Functional Brain Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.02161/) (2017)
- [DecGAN: Decoupling Generative Adversarial Network detecting abnormal neural circuits for Alzheimer's disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05712/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Learning Based Structural Brain-network Generative Model for Analyzing Mild Cognitive Impairment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08896/) (2022)
- [Cross-Modal Transformer GAN: A Brain Structure-Function Deep Fusing Framework for Alzheimer's Disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.13393/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [2DMamba: Efficient State Space Model for Image Representation with Applications on Giga-Pixel Whole Slide Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00678/) (2024)
- [DOPRA: Decoding Over-accumulation Penalization and Re-allocation in Specific Weighting Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15130/) (2024)
- [Deep Neural Networks and Brain Alignment: Brain Encoding and Decoding (Survey)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10246/) (2023)
- [SMAFormer: Synergistic Multi-Attention Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00346/) (2024)
- [Test-Time Intensity Consistency Adaptation for Shadow Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07695/) (2024)
- [Top-K Pooling with Patch Contrastive Learning for Weakly-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09828/) (2023)
- [DocDeshadower: Frequency-Aware Transformer for Document Shadow Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15318/) (2023)
- [UWFormer: Underwater Image Enhancement via a Semi-Supervised Multi-Scale Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20210/) (2023)
- [Implicit Multi-Spectral Transformer: An Lightweight and Effective Visible to Infrared Image Translation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07072/) (2024)
- [LensNet: An End-to-End Learning Framework for Empirical Point Spread Function Modeling and Lensless Imaging Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01755/) (2025)
- [ShaDocFormer: A Shadow-Attentive Threshold Detector With Cascaded Fusion Refiner for Document Shadow Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06670/) (2023)
- [Diffusion-based Graph Generative Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15617/) (2024)
- [UIE-UnFold: Deep Unfolding Network with Color Priors and Vision Transformer for Underwater Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10653/) (2024)
- [DLEN: Dual Branch of Transformer for Low-Light Image Enhancement in Dual Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12235/) (2025)
- [ConnectomeDiffuser: Generative AI Enables Brain Network Construction from Diffusion Tensor Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22683/) (2025)
- [FPED: A Functional-Network Prior-Guided Mixture-of-Experts Framework for Interpretable Brain Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19279/) (2026)
- [Medical Visual Prompting (MVP): A Unified Framework for Versatile and High-Quality Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01127/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Query Prompting for Multi-Domain Landmark Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01194/) (2024)
- [TAGE: Trustworthy Attribute Group Editing for Stable Few-shot Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17855/) (2024)
- [Forestpest-YOLO: A High-Performance Detection Framework for Small Forestry Pests](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00547/) (2025)
- [Visualizing the Invisible: Generative Visual Grounding Empowers Universal EEG Understanding in MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18172/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Brain network analysis is essential for diagnosing and intervention for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, previous research relied primarily on specific time-consuming and subjective toolkits. Only few tools can obtain the structural brain networks from brain diffusion tensor images (DTI). In this paper, we propose a diffusion based end-to-end brain network generative model Brain Diffuser that directly shapes the structural brain networks from DTI. Compared to existing toolkits, Brain Diffuser exploits more structural connectivity features and disease-related information by analyzing disparities in structural brain networks across subjects. For the case of Alzheimer's disease, the proposed model performs better than the results from existing toolkits on the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database.