# BrainNetDiff: Generative AI Empowers Brain Network Generation via Multimodal Diffusion Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.05199 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.05199/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 23 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Nov 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Medical imaging and segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/medical-imaging-and-segmentation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07035/) (2017)
- [DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14734/) (2022)
- [Graph Convolutional Policy Network for Goal-Directed Molecular Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02473/) (2018)
- [GraphAF: a Flow-based Autoregressive Model for Molecular Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09382/) (2020)
- [Permutation Invariant Graph Generation via Score-Based Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00638/) (2020)
- [Learning Deep Generative Models of Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03324/) (2018)
- [Diagnosing and Enhancing VAE Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05789/) (2019)
- [Constrained Graph Variational Autoencoders for Molecule Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09076/) (2018)
- [MoFlow: An Invertible Flow Model for Generating Molecular Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10137/) (2020)
- [Learning Dynamic Graph Representation of Brain Connectome with Spatio-Temporal Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13495/) (2021)
- [FBNETGEN: Task-aware GNN-based fMRI Analysis via Functional Brain Network Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12465/) (2022)
- [Interpretable Graph Neural Networks for Connectome-Based Brain Disorder Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00813/) (2022)
- [Spectral Graph Convolutions for Population-based Disease Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03020/) (2017)
- [Diagnosis of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) with Structured Latent Multi-View Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03227/) (2020)
- [Multiple Kernel Learning in the Primal for Multi-modal Alzheimer's Disease Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1310.0890/) (2013)
- [A Prior Guided Adversarial Representation Learning and Hypergraph Perceptual Network for Predicting Abnormal Connections of Alzheimer's Disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.09302/) (2021)
- [Multiscale Autoencoder with Structural-Functional Attention Network for Alzheimer's Disease Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04945/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [GraphTreeGen: Subtree-Centric Approach to Efficient and Supervised Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09710/) (2025)
- [Structural-Functional Brain Connectivity Generation via Multimodal Hypergraph-based Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02722/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Brain network analysis has emerged as pivotal method for gaining a deeper understanding of brain functions and disease mechanisms. Despite the existence of various network construction approaches, shortcomings persist in the learning of correlations between structural and functional brain imaging data. In light of this, we introduce a novel method called BrainNetDiff, which combines a multi-head Transformer encoder to extract relevant features from fMRI time series and integrates a conditional latent diffusion model for brain network generation. Leveraging a conditional prompt and a fusion attention mechanism, this method significantly improves the accuracy and stability of brain network generation. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first framework that employs diffusion for the fusion of the multimodal brain imaging and brain network generation from images to graphs. We validate applicability of this framework in the construction of brain network across healthy and neurologically impaired cohorts using the authentic dataset. Experimental results vividly demonstrate the significant effectiveness of the proposed method across the downstream disease classification tasks. These findings convincingly emphasize the prospective value in the field of brain network research, particularly its key significance in neuroimaging analysis and disease diagnosis. This research provides a valuable reference for the processing of multimodal brain imaging data and introduces a novel, efficient solution to the field of neuroimaging.