# SpectralDiff: A Generative Framework for Hyperspectral Image Classification with Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05961 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05961/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 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 44 of its 95 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Apr 2023.

## 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 44)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (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)
- [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)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Variational Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00630/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Vector Quantized Diffusion Model for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14822/) (2021)
- [Score-based Generative Modeling in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05931/) (2021)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [DiffusionDet: Diffusion Model for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09788/) (2022)
- [Autoregressive Denoising Diffusion Models for Multivariate Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12072/) (2021)
- [Come-Closer-Diffuse-Faster: Accelerating Conditional Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems through Stochastic Contraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05146/) (2021)
- [SegDiff: Image Segmentation with Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00390/) (2021)
- [Prior Guided Feature Enrichment Network for Few-Shot Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01449/) (2020)
- [Torsional Diffusion for Molecular Conformer Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01729/) (2022)
- [Diffusion-based Time Series Imputation and Forecasting with Structured State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09399/) (2022)
- [Speech Enhancement and Dereverberation with Diffusion-based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05830/) (2022)
- [EGSDE: Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation via Energy-Guided Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06635/) (2022)
- [SpectralFormer: Rethinking Hyperspectral Image Classification with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02988/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [GeoSynth: Contextually-Aware High-Resolution Satellite Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06637/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models Meet Remote Sensing: Principles, Methods, and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08926/) (2024)
- [GCD-DDPM: A Generative Change Detection Model Based on Difference-Feature Guided DDPM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03424/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Survey for Hyperspectral Image Classification: The Evolution from Conventional to Transformers and Mamba Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14955/) (2024)
- [Stereo Event-based, 6-DOF Pose Tracking for Uncooperative Spacecraft](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12732/) (2025)
- [Vision-Language Modeling Meets Remote Sensing: Models, Datasets and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14361/) (2025)
- [Exploring Multi-Timestep Multi-Stage Diffusion Features for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08964/) (2023)
- [HSR-KAN: Efficient Hyperspectral Image Super-Resolution via Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06705/) (2024)
- [Investigation of Hierarchical Spectral Vision Transformer Architecture for Classification of Hyperspectral Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09244/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models for Hyperspectral Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11158/) (2025)
- [A Multitask Deep Learning Model for Classification and Regression of Hyperspectral Images: Application to the large-scale dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16384/) (2024)
- [Filterless Snapshot Hyperspectral Imaging using Guided Patch Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02798/) (2024)
- [Spatial-Spectral Diffusion Contrastive Representation Network for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19699/) (2025)
- [Language-Informed Hyperspectral Image Synthesis for Imbalanced-Small Sample Classification via Semi-Supervised Conditional Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19700/) (2025)
- [Balanced Diffusion-Guided Fusion for Multimodal Remote Sensing Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23310/) (2025)
- [GEWDiff: Geometric Enhanced Wavelet-based Diffusion Model for Hyperspectral Image Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07103/) (2025)
- [UniDiff: Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of Diffusion Models for Land Cover Classification with Multi-Modal Remotely Sensed Imagery and Sparse Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00261/) (2025)
- [Label-Efficient Hyperspectral Image Classification via Spectral FiLM Modulation of Low-Level Pretrained Diffusion Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03430/) (2025)
- [High-Dimensional Noise to Low-Dimensional Manifolds: A Manifold-Space Diffusion Framework for Degraded Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26279/) (2026)
- [AnyBand-Diff: A Unified Remote Sensing Image Generation and Band Repair Framework with Spectral Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14341/) (2026)
- [Beyond the Visible: Jointly Attending to Spectral and Spatial Dimensions with HSI-Diffusion for the FINCH Spacecraft](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10724/) (2024)
- [Automated Learning of Semantic Embedding Representations for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05732/) (2025)
- [Hyperspectral Image Generation with Unmixing Guided Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02601/) (2025)
- [Knowledge-guided Complex Diffusion Model for PolSAR Image Classification in Contourlet Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05666/) (2025)
- [Hyperspectral data augmentation with transformer-based diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08363/) (2025)
- [Multiview Manifold Evidential Fusion for PolSAR Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11171/) (2025)
- [Uncertainty Quantification in HSI Reconstruction using Physics-Aware Diffusion Priors and Optics-Encoded Measurements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18473/) (2025)
- [Earth Science Foundation Models: From Perception to Reasoning and Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12542/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Hyperspectral Image (HSI) classification is an important issue in remote sensing field with extensive applications in earth science. In recent years, a large number of deep learning-based HSI classification methods have been proposed. However, existing methods have limited ability to handle high-dimensional, highly redundant, and complex data, making it challenging to capture the spectral-spatial distributions of data and relationships between samples. To address this issue, we propose a generative framework for HSI classification with diffusion models (SpectralDiff) that effectively mines the distribution information of high-dimensional and highly redundant data by iteratively denoising and explicitly constructing the data generation process, thus better reflecting the relationships between samples. The framework consists of a spectral-spatial diffusion module, and an attention-based classification module. The spectral-spatial diffusion module adopts forward and reverse spectral-spatial diffusion processes to achieve adaptive construction of sample relationships without requiring prior knowledge of graphical structure or neighborhood information. It captures spectral-spatial distribution and contextual information of objects in HSI and mines unsupervised spectral-spatial diffusion features within the reverse diffusion process. Finally, these features are fed into the attention-based classification module for per-pixel classification. The diffusion features can facilitate cross-sample perception via reconstruction distribution, leading to improved classification performance. Experiments on three public HSI datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve better performance than state-of-the-art methods. For the sake of reproducibility, the source code of SpectralDiff will be publicly available at https://github.com/chenning0115/SpectralDiff.