mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

DiffusionSTR: Diffusion Model for Scene Text Recognition

arXiv 2306.16707 ↗First posted 29 Jun 2023cs.CVcited by 7

On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing

Abstract (arXiv)

This paper presents Diffusion Model for Scene Text Recognition (DiffusionSTR), an end-to-end text recognition framework using diffusion models for recognizing text in the wild. While existing studies have viewed the scene text recognition task as an image-to-text transformation, we rethought it as a text-text one under images in a diffusion model. We show for the first time that the diffusion model can be applied to text recognition. Furthermore, experimental results on publicly available datasets show that the proposed method achieves competitive accuracy compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 20 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Jun 2023.

Builds on

20 of 32 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2022DiffusionDet: Diffusion Model for Object Detection17 Nov
  2. 2022Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents13 Apr

Other references · 18

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 30,186
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  4. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,058
  5. 2020DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesiscited by 1,354
  6. 2021Argmax Flows and Multinomial Diffusion: Learning Categorical Distributionscited by 574
  7. 2015An End-to-End Trainable Neural Network for Image-based Sequence Recognition and Its Application to Scene Text Recognitioncited by 520
  8. 2016Synthetic Data for Text Localisation in Natural Imagescited by 396
  9. 2014Synthetic Data and Artificial Neural Networks for Natural Scene Text Recognitioncited by 214
  10. 2021Read Like Humans: Autonomous, Bidirectional and Iterative Language Modeling for Scene Text Recognitioncited by 194
  11. 2022Scene Text Recognition with Permuted Autoregressive Sequence Modelscited by 149
  12. 2020Towards Accurate Scene Text Recognition with Semantic Reasoning Networkscited by 131
6 more
  1. 2014Reading Text in the Wild with Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 122
  2. 2021Vision Transformer for Fast and Efficient Scene Text Recognitioncited by 81
  3. 2019TextScanner: Reading Characters in Order for Robust Scene Text Recognitioncited by 68
  4. 2021What If We Only Use Real Datasets for Scene Text Recognition? Toward Scene Text Recognition With Fewer Labelscited by 63
  5. 2020GTC: Guided Training of CTC Towards Efficient and Accurate Scene Text Recognitioncited by 52
  6. 2023A3S: Adversarial learning of semantic representations for Scene-Text Spottingcited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 3; 2024: 2; 2025: 0; 2026: 2.

7 papers.

  1. 2023DTrOCR: Decoder-only Transformer for Optical Character Recognitioncited by 40
  2. 2023Diffusion-based Blind Text Image Super-Resolutioncited by 25
  3. 2023RL-LOGO: Deep Reinforcement Learning Localization for Logo Recognitioncited by 4
  4. 2024JSTR: Judgment Improves Scene Text Recognitioncited by 1
  5. 2024JaPOC: Japanese Post-OCR Correction Benchmark using Voucherscited by 1
  6. 2026TraRA: Trajectory-level Recognition Aggregation for Video Text Spotting in Urban Surveillancecited by 0
  7. 2026Adversarial Attacks on Deep OCR Systemscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025MDiff4STR: Mask Diffusion Model for Scene Text Recognition
  2. 2023On Manipulating Scene Text in the Wild with Diffusion Models
  3. 2023Enhancing Scene Text Detectors with Realistic Text Image Synthesis Using Diffusion Models
  4. 2024TextSSR: Diffusion-based Data Synthesis for Scene Text Recognition
  5. 2023Diffusion in the Dark: A Diffusion Model for Low-Light Text Recognition
  6. 2023Discffusion: Discriminative Diffusion Models as Few-shot Vision and Language Learners
  7. 2023De-Diffusion Makes Text a Strong Cross-Modal Interface
  8. 2024Diffusion Lens: Interpreting Text Encoders in Text-to-Image Pipelines