mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

WDM: 3D Wavelet Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Medical Image Synthesis

arXiv 2402.19043 ↗First posted 29 Feb 2024eess.IV cs.CVcited by 56

On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation

Abstract (arXiv)

Due to the three-dimensional nature of CT- or MR-scans, generative modeling of medical images is a particularly challenging task. Existing approaches mostly apply patch-wise, slice-wise, or cascaded generation techniques to fit the high-dimensional data into the limited GPU memory. However, these approaches may introduce artifacts and potentially restrict the model's applicability for certain downstream tasks. This work presents WDM, a wavelet-based medical image synthesis framework that applies a diffusion model on wavelet decomposed images. The presented approach is a simple yet effective way of scaling 3D diffusion models to high resolutions and can be trained on a single SI40gigabyte GPU. Experimental results on BraTS and LIDC-IDRI unconditional image generation at a resolution of 128 × 128 × 128 demonstrate state-of-the-art image fidelity (FID) and sample diversity (MS-SSIM) scores compared to recent GANs, Diffusion Models, and Latent Diffusion Models. Our proposed method is the only one capable of generating high-quality images at a resolution of 256 × 256 × 256, outperforming all comparing methods.

Key facts. Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 28 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Feb 2024.

Builds on

28 of 37 references.

Closest ancestors · 9

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Augmenting medical image classifiers with synthetic data from latent diffusion models23 Aug
  2. 2023Make-A-Volume: Leveraging Latent Diffusion Models for Cross-Modality 3D Brain MRI Synthesis19 Jul
  3. 2023Memory-Efficient 3D Denoising Diffusion Models for Medical Image Processing27 Mar
  4. 2023Diffusion Models for Contrast Harmonization of Magnetic Resonance Images14 Mar
  5. 2022Generating Realistic Brain MRIs via a Conditional Diffusion Probabilistic Model15 Dec
  6. 2022MedSegDiff: Medical Image Segmentation with Diffusion Probabilistic Model1 Nov
  7. 2022Brain Imaging Generation with Latent Diffusion Models15 Sep
  8. 2022Diffusion Models for Medical Anomaly Detection8 Mar
  9. 2021Diffusion Models for Implicit Image Segmentation Ensembles6 Dec

Other references · 19

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  3. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,185
  4. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,005
  5. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,736
  6. 2021Tackling the Generative Learning Trilemma with Denoising Diffusion GANscited by 515
  7. 2021The RSNA-ASNR-MICCAI BraTS 2021 Benchmark on Brain Tumor Segmentation and Radiogenomic Classificationcited by 507
  8. 2019Med3D: Transfer Learning for 3D Medical Image Analysiscited by 282
  9. 2022Wavelet Diffusion Models are fast and scalable Image Generatorscited by 116
  10. 2023Generative models improve fairness of medical classifiers under distribution shiftscited by 90
  11. 2021MedPerf: Open Benchmarking Platform for Medical Artificial Intelligence using Federated Evaluationcited by 88
  12. 2019Generation of 3D Brain MRI Using Auto-Encoding Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 65
7 more
  1. 2022Wavelet Score-Based Generative Modelingcited by 61
  2. 2020Wavelet Integrated CNNs for Noise-Robust Image Classificationcited by 60
  3. 2020Hierarchical Amortized Training for Memory-efficient High Resolution 3D GANcited by 60
  4. 20213D-StyleGAN: A Style-Based Generative Adversarial Network for Generative Modeling of Three-Dimensional Medical Imagescited by 32
  5. 2020Modelling the Distribution of 3D Brain MRI using a 2D Slice VAEcited by 20
  6. 2023Point Cloud Diffusion Models for Automatic Implant Generationcited by 19
  7. 2022FakeNews: GAN-based generation of realistic 3D volumetric data -- A systematic review and taxonomycited by 13

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 9; 2025: 22; 2026: 25.

56 papers.

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  1. 20243D MedDiffusion: A 3D Medical Latent Diffusion Model for Controllable and High-quality Medical Image Generationcited by 37
  2. 2024I2I-Mamba: Multi-modal medical image synthesis via selective state space modelingcited by 26
  3. 2024Denoising Diffusion Models for 3D Healthy Brain Tissue Inpaintingcited by 22
  4. 2025MAISI-v2: Accelerated 3D High-Resolution Medical Image Synthesis with Rectified Flow and Region-specific Contrastive Losscited by 20
  5. 2024FairDiff: Fair Segmentation with Point-Image Diffusioncited by 15
  6. 2025MedSegFactory: Text-Guided Generation of Medical Image-Mask Pairscited by 13
  7. 2025fastWDM3D: Fast and Accurate 3D Healthy Tissue Inpaintingcited by 8
  8. 2025MedFuncta: A Unified Framework for Learning Efficient Medical Neural Fieldscited by 6
  9. 2024Back-in-Time Diffusion: Unsupervised Detection of Medical Deepfakescited by 5
  10. 2026FlowLet: Conditional 3D Brain MRI Synthesis using Wavelet Flow Matchingcited by 5
  11. 2024Non-Reference Quality Assessment for Medical Imaging: Application to Synthetic Brain MRIscited by 4
  12. 2024Brain Tumour Removing and Missing Modality Generation using 3D WDMcited by 4
38 more
  1. 2025LAND: Lung and Nodule Diffusion for 3D Chest CT Synthesis with Anatomical Guidancecited by 4
  2. 2026WFM: 3D Wavelet Flow Matching for Ultrafast Multi-Modal MRI Synthesiscited by 4
  3. 2024Denoising Diffusion Models for Anomaly Localization in Medical Imagescited by 3
  4. 20253D Wavelet Latent Diffusion Model for Whole-Body MR-to-CT Modality Translationcited by 3
  5. 2026Scalable next-scale autoregression for medical image generation across anatomical regionscited by 3
  6. 2025Diffusion-Driven Generation of Minimally Preprocessed Brain MRIcited by 2
  7. 2026Multiscale Structure-Guided Latent Diffusion for Multimodal MRI Translationcited by 2
  8. 2026Pixel-Level Residual Diffusion Transformer: Scalable 3D CT Volume Generationcited by 2
  9. 2025Computationally Efficient Diffusion Models in Medical Imaging: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 1
  10. 2025RealDeal: Enhancing Realism and Details in Brain Image Generation via Image-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 1
  11. 2025Towards MR-Based Trochleoplasty Planningcited by 1
  12. 2025Tooth-Diffusion: Guided 3D CBCT Synthesis with Fine-Grained Tooth Conditioningcited by 1
  13. 2025Contrastive Anatomy-Contrast Disentanglement: A Domain-General MRI Harmonization Methodcited by 1
  14. 2026Cosmo3DFlow: Wavelet Flow Matching for Spatial-to-Spectral Compression in Reconstructing the Early Universecited by 1
  15. 2026NOIR: Neural Operator mapping for Implicit Representationscited by 1
  16. 2026Everything at Every Scale: Scale-Invariant Diffusion with Continuous Super-Resolutioncited by 1
  17. 2026WaveDiT: Distribution-Aware Wavelet Flow Matching for Efficient 3D Brain MRI Synthesiscited by 1
  18. 2024Evaluating Utility of Memory Efficient Medical Image Generation: A Study on Lung Nodule Segmentationcited by 0
  19. 2025StructDiff: Structure-aware Diffusion Model for 3D Fine-grained Medical Image Synthesiscited by 0
  20. 2025Enhancing Privacy: The Utility of Stand-Alone Synthetic CT and MRI for Tumor and Bone Segmentationcited by 0
  21. 2025Spatio-Temporal Conditional Diffusion Models for Forecasting Future Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Masks Conditioned on Treatmentscited by 0
  22. 2025MInDI-3D: Iterative Deep Learning in 3D for Sparse-view Cone Beam Computed Tomographycited by 0
  23. 2025Imagining Alternatives: Towards High-Resolution 3D Counterfactual Medical Image Generation via Language Guidancecited by 0
  24. 2025K-Syn: K-space Data Synthesis in Ultra Low-data Regimescited by 0
  25. 2025SLaM-DiMM: Shared Latent Modeling for Diffusion Based Missing Modality Synthesis in MRIcited by 0
  26. 2025Pattern-Aware Diffusion Synthesis of fMRI/dMRI with Tissue and Microstructural Refinementcited by 0
  27. 2025From Healthy Scans to Annotated Tumors: A Tumor Fabrication Framework for 3D Brain MRI Synthesiscited by 0
  28. 2025GFT-GCN: Privacy-Preserving 3D Face Mesh Recognition with Spectral Diffusioncited by 0
  29. 2026POWDR: Pathology-preserving Outpainting with Wavelet Diffusion for 3D MRIcited by 0
  30. 2026MeDUET: Disentangled Unified Pretraining for 3D Medical Image Synthesis and Analysiscited by 0
  31. 2026Volumetric Directional Diffusion: Anchoring Uncertainty Quantification in Anatomical Consensus for Ambiguous Medical Image Segmentationcited by 0
  32. 20263D CBCT Artefact Removal Using Perpendicular Score-Based Diffusion Modelscited by 0
  33. 2026VolDiT: Controllable Volumetric Medical Image Synthesis with Diffusion Transformerscited by 0
  34. 2026CardioDiT: Latent Diffusion Transformers for 4D Cardiac MRI Synthesiscited by 0
  35. 2026Structure-Adaptive Sparse Diffusion in Voxel Space for 3D Medical Image Enhancementcited by 0
  36. 2026LiFT: Lifted Inter-slice Feature Trajectories for 3D Image Generation from 2D Generatorscited by 0
  37. 2026TCAM-Diff: Triplane-Aware Cross-Attention Medical Diffusion Modelcited by 0
  38. 2026Wavelet Phase Diffusion for Structurally and Semantically Consistent Sim-to-Real Translationcited by 0

50 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)

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  1. 2024cWDM: Conditional Wavelet Diffusion Models for Cross-Modality 3D Medical Image Synthesis
  2. 2025MedLoRD: A Medical Low-Resource Diffusion Model for High-Resolution 3D CT Image Synthesis
  3. 2024Deep Generative Models for 3D Medical Image Synthesis
  4. 2024A Wavelet Diffusion GAN for Image Super-Resolution
  5. 2023Stage-by-stage Wavelet Optimization Refinement Diffusion Model for Sparse-View CT Reconstruction
  6. 2025Regression is all you need for medical image translation
  7. 2026PPDM: Pixel Puzzling Diffusion Model for Speed and Memory Efficient Volumetric Medical Image Translation
  8. 2022Medical Diffusion: Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Medical Image Generation