High Fidelity Image Counterfactuals with Probabilistic Causal Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
We present a general causal generative modelling framework for accurate estimation of high fidelity image counterfactuals with deep structural causal models. Estimation of interventional and counterfactual queries for high-dimensional structured variables, such as images, remains a challenging task. We leverage ideas from causal mediation analysis and advances in generative modelling to design new deep causal mechanisms for structured variables in causal models. Our experiments demonstrate that our proposed mechanisms are capable of accurate abduction and estimation of direct, indirect and total effects as measured by axiomatic soundness of counterfactuals.
Key facts. Cited by 53 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 64 of its 96 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2023.
Builds on
64 of 96 references.
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50 most cited of 64 All 64 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 5; 2024: 17; 2025: 21; 2026: 10.
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- 2023Fast Diffusion-Based Counterfactuals for Shortcut Removal and Generationcited by 41
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generationcited by 22
- 2023From Identifiable Causal Representations to Controllable Counterfactual Generation: A Survey on Causal Generative Modelingcited by 21
- 2024Counterfactual Image Editingcited by 20
- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusioncited by 17
- 2024Diffusion-based Iterative Counterfactual Explanations for Fetal Ultrasound Image Quality Assessmentcited by 13
- 2024Latent Drifting in Diffusion Models for Counterfactual Medical Image Synthesiscited by 13
- 2024Mitigating attribute amplification in counterfactual image generationcited by 12
- 2024Robust image representations with counterfactual contrastive learningcited by 12
- 2023No Fair Lunch: A Causal Perspective on Dataset Bias in Machine Learning for Medical Imagingcited by 11
- 2024Counterfactual contrastive learning: robust representations via causal image synthesiscited by 11
- 2024Counterfactual Generative Modeling with Variational Causal Inferencecited by 10
38 more
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- 2024Modular Learning of Deep Causal Generative Models for High-dimensional Causal Inferencecited by 9
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- 2024Latent Causal Modeling for 3D Brain MRI Counterfactualscited by 7
- 2024Semi-Supervised Learning for Deep Causal Generative Modelscited by 6
- 2025Causally Steered Diffusion for Automated Video Counterfactual Generationcited by 5
- 2025Counterfactual Identifiability via Dynamic Optimal Transportcited by 5
- 2024Conditional Generative Models are Sufficient to Sample from Any Causal Effect Estimandcited by 4
- 2024Synthetic Data for Robust Stroke Segmentationcited by 4
- 2025Causal-Adapter: Taming Text-to-Image Diffusion for Faithful Counterfactual Generationcited by 4
- 2026Overcoming Statistical Bias in Action-Controllable World Modelscited by 4
- 2024MACAW: A Causal Generative Model for Medical Imagingcited by 3
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- 2023SSL Framework for Causal Inconsistency between Structures and Representationscited by 2
- 2025Causal Disentanglement for Robust Long-tail Medical Image Generationcited by 2
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- 2025Probabilistic Modelling is Sufficient for Causal Inferencecited by 2
- 2026Scaling Generative Foundation Models for Chest Radiography with Rectified Flow Transformerscited by 2
- 2025Explaining 3D Computed Tomography Classifiers with Counterfactualscited by 1
- 2025Leveraging Vision-Language Foundation Models to Reveal Hidden Image-Attribute Relationships in Medical Imagingcited by 1
- 2025Integrating Anatomical Priors into a Causal Diffusion Modelcited by 1
- 2025GDR-learners: Orthogonal Learning of Generative Models for Potential Outcomescited by 1
- 2025Synthesising Counterfactual Explanations via Label-Conditional Gaussian Mixture Variational Autoencoderscited by 1
- 2026Pixel-level Counterfactual Contrastive Learning for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 1
- 2026Generating Chest X-Ray Counterfactuals by Specialising Foundation Image Modelscited by 1
- 2023Reconstruction of Patient-Specific Confounders in AI-based Radiologic Image Interpretation using Generative Pretrainingcited by 0
- 2024Towards Causal Relationship in Indefinite Data: Baseline Model and New Datasetscited by 0
- 2024Natural Counterfactuals With Necessary Backtrackingcited by 0
- 2024Causally Consistent Normalizing Flowcited by 0
- 2025Learning Counterfactual Outcomes Under Rank Preservationcited by 0
- 2025Unsupervised Structural-Counterfactual Generation under Domain Shiftcited by 0
- 2025Learning to Harmonize Cross-vendor X-ray Images by Non-linear Image Dynamics Correctioncited by 0
- 2025Estimating Treatment Effects with Independent Component Analysiscited by 0
- 2025Counterfactual Explanations in Medical Imaging: Exploring SPN-Guided Latent Space Manipulationcited by 0
- 2026FlexCausal: Flexible Causal Disentanglement via Structural Flow Priors and Manifold-Aware Interventionscited by 0
- 2026Positional Segmentor-Guided Counterfactual Fine-Tuning for Spatially Localized Image Synthesiscited by 0
- 2026Counterfactual Stress Testing for Image Classification Modelscited by 0
50 most cited of 53 All 53 (JSON)
- 2026Generating Chest X-Ray Counterfactuals by Specialising Foundation Image Models21 Sep 2026
- 2026To do(x) or not to do(x): Medical Image Counterfactuals for Dataset Augmentation12 Sep 2026
- 2026Counterfactual Marginalisation: Framework for Evaluating Robustness to Nuisance Variables9 Sep 2026
- 2026Overcoming Statistical Bias in Action-Controllable World Models5 Aug 2026
- 2026Scaling Generative Foundation Models for Chest Radiography with Rectified Flow Transformers17 Jun 2026
- 2026Are Good Generators Good Decision-Makers? Policy Learning for General Interventions via Retargeted Counterfactual Generation5 Jun 2026
- 2026Counterfactual Stress Testing for Image Classification Models11 May 2026
- 2026Positional Segmentor-Guided Counterfactual Fine-Tuning for Spatially Localized Image Synthesis22 Mar 2026
- 2026Pixel-level Counterfactual Contrastive Learning for Medical Image Segmentation17 Mar 2026
- 2026FlexCausal: Flexible Causal Disentanglement via Structural Flow Priors and Manifold-Aware Interventions29 Jan 2026
- 2025Probabilistic Modelling is Sufficient for Causal Inference29 Dec 2025
- 2025Counterfactual Identifiability via Dynamic Optimal Transport9 Oct 2025
38 more
- 2025Synthesising Counterfactual Explanations via Label-Conditional Gaussian Mixture Variational Autoencoders6 Oct 2025
- 2025Segmentor-Guided Counterfactual Fine-Tuning for Locally Coherent and Targeted Image Synthesis29 Sep 2025
- 2025Causal-Adapter: Taming Text-to-Image Diffusion for Faithful Counterfactual Generation29 Sep 2025
- 2025GDR-learners: Orthogonal Learning of Generative Models for Potential Outcomes26 Sep 2025
- 2025Integrating Anatomical Priors into a Causal Diffusion Model10 Sep 2025
- 2025Evaluation of 3D Counterfactual Brain MRI Generation4 Aug 2025
- 2025Counterfactual Explanations in Medical Imaging: Exploring SPN-Guided Latent Space Manipulation25 Jul 2025
- 2025Flow Stochastic Segmentation Networks24 Jul 2025
- 2025Estimating Treatment Effects with Independent Component Analysis22 Jul 2025
- 2025CF-Seg: Counterfactuals meet Segmentation19 Jun 2025
- 2025Causally Steered Diffusion for Automated Video Counterfactual Generation17 Jun 2025
- 2025Diffusion Counterfactual Generation with Semantic Abduction9 Jun 2025
- 2025Causal Disentanglement for Robust Long-tail Medical Image Generation20 Apr 2025
- 2025Learning to Harmonize Cross-vendor X-ray Images by Non-linear Image Dynamics Correction14 Apr 2025
- 2025Leveraging Vision-Language Foundation Models to Reveal Hidden Image-Attribute Relationships in Medical Imaging30 Mar 2025
- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusion28 Feb 2025
- 2025Unsupervised Structural-Counterfactual Generation under Domain Shift17 Feb 2025
- 2025Explaining 3D Computed Tomography Classifiers with Counterfactuals11 Feb 2025
- 2025Learning Counterfactual Outcomes Under Rank Preservation10 Feb 2025
- 2024Latent Drifting in Diffusion Models for Counterfactual Medical Image Synthesis30 Dec 2024
- 2024Causally Consistent Normalizing Flow16 Dec 2024
- 2024MACAW: A Causal Generative Model for Medical Imaging3 Dec 2024
- 2024Counterfactual Generative Modeling with Variational Causal Inference16 Oct 2024
- 2024Robust image representations with counterfactual contrastive learning16 Sep 2024
- 2024Latent Causal Modeling for 3D Brain MRI Counterfactuals9 Sep 2024
- 2024Synthetic Data for Robust Stroke Segmentation2 Apr 2024
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generation29 Mar 2024
- 2024Semi-Supervised Learning for Deep Causal Generative Models27 Mar 2024
- 2024Counterfactual contrastive learning: robust representations via causal image synthesis14 Mar 2024
- 2024Mitigating attribute amplification in counterfactual image generation14 Mar 2024
- 2024Diffusion-based Iterative Counterfactual Explanations for Fetal Ultrasound Image Quality Assessment13 Mar 2024
- 2024Conditional Generative Models are Sufficient to Sample from Any Causal Effect Estimand12 Feb 2024
- 2024Counterfactual Image Editing7 Feb 2024
- 2024Natural Counterfactuals With Necessary Backtracking2 Feb 2024
- 2024Towards Causal Relationship in Indefinite Data: Baseline Model and New Datasets16 Jan 2024
- 2024Modular Learning of Deep Causal Generative Models for High-dimensional Causal Inference2 Jan 2024
- 2023Fast Diffusion-Based Counterfactuals for Shortcut Removal and Generation21 Dec 2023
- 2023SSL Framework for Causal Inconsistency between Structures and Representations28 Oct 2023
50 newest of 53 All 53 (JSON)
- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusioncited by 17
- 2024Latent Drifting in Diffusion Models for Counterfactual Medical Image Synthesiscited by 13
- 2025Diffusion Counterfactual Generation with Semantic Abductioncited by 8
- 2025Causally Steered Diffusion for Automated Video Counterfactual Generationcited by 5
- 2025Causal-Adapter: Taming Text-to-Image Diffusion for Faithful Counterfactual Generationcited by 4
- 2025Causal Disentanglement for Robust Long-tail Medical Image Generationcited by 2
- 2026Scaling Generative Foundation Models for Chest Radiography with Rectified Flow Transformerscited by 2
- 2025Integrating Anatomical Priors into a Causal Diffusion Modelcited by 1
- 2023Reconstruction of Patient-Specific Confounders in AI-based Radiologic Image Interpretation using Generative Pretrainingcited by 0
- 2026Scaling Generative Foundation Models for Chest Radiography with Rectified Flow Transformers17 Jun 2026
- 2025Causal-Adapter: Taming Text-to-Image Diffusion for Faithful Counterfactual Generation29 Sep 2025
- 2025Integrating Anatomical Priors into a Causal Diffusion Model10 Sep 2025
- 2025Causally Steered Diffusion for Automated Video Counterfactual Generation17 Jun 2025
- 2025Diffusion Counterfactual Generation with Semantic Abduction9 Jun 2025
- 2025Causal Disentanglement for Robust Long-tail Medical Image Generation20 Apr 2025
- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusion28 Feb 2025
- 2024Latent Drifting in Diffusion Models for Counterfactual Medical Image Synthesis30 Dec 2024
- 2023Reconstruction of Patient-Specific Confounders in AI-based Radiologic Image Interpretation using Generative Pretraining29 Sep 2023
- 2023Fast Diffusion-Based Counterfactuals for Shortcut Removal and Generationcited by 41
- 2024Benchmarking Counterfactual Image Generationcited by 22
- 2023From Identifiable Causal Representations to Controllable Counterfactual Generation: A Survey on Causal Generative Modelingcited by 21
- 2024Counterfactual Image Editingcited by 20
- 2024Diffusion-based Iterative Counterfactual Explanations for Fetal Ultrasound Image Quality Assessmentcited by 13
- 2024Mitigating attribute amplification in counterfactual image generationcited by 12
- 2024Robust image representations with counterfactual contrastive learningcited by 12
- 2023No Fair Lunch: A Causal Perspective on Dataset Bias in Machine Learning for Medical Imagingcited by 11
- 2024Counterfactual contrastive learning: robust representations via causal image synthesiscited by 11
- 2024Counterfactual Generative Modeling with Variational Causal Inferencecited by 10
- 2025CF-Seg: Counterfactuals meet Segmentationcited by 10
- 2024Modular Learning of Deep Causal Generative Models for High-dimensional Causal Inferencecited by 9
12 most cited of 42 All 42 (JSON)
- 2026Generating Chest X-Ray Counterfactuals by Specialising Foundation Image Models21 Sep 2026
- 2026To do(x) or not to do(x): Medical Image Counterfactuals for Dataset Augmentation12 Sep 2026
- 2026Counterfactual Marginalisation: Framework for Evaluating Robustness to Nuisance Variables9 Sep 2026
- 2026Are Good Generators Good Decision-Makers? Policy Learning for General Interventions via Retargeted Counterfactual Generation5 Jun 2026
- 2026Counterfactual Stress Testing for Image Classification Models11 May 2026
- 2026Positional Segmentor-Guided Counterfactual Fine-Tuning for Spatially Localized Image Synthesis22 Mar 2026
- 2026Pixel-level Counterfactual Contrastive Learning for Medical Image Segmentation17 Mar 2026
- 2026FlexCausal: Flexible Causal Disentanglement via Structural Flow Priors and Manifold-Aware Interventions29 Jan 2026
- 2025Probabilistic Modelling is Sufficient for Causal Inference29 Dec 2025
- 2025Counterfactual Identifiability via Dynamic Optimal Transport9 Oct 2025
- 2025Synthesising Counterfactual Explanations via Label-Conditional Gaussian Mixture Variational Autoencoders6 Oct 2025
- 2025Segmentor-Guided Counterfactual Fine-Tuning for Locally Coherent and Targeted Image Synthesis29 Sep 2025
12 newest of 42 All 42 (JSON)