# VM-DDPM: Vision Mamba Diffusion for Medical Image Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05667 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05667/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 32 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 May 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Medical imaging and segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/medical-imaging-and-segmentation/)
- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Mamba for medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/mamba-for-medical-image-analysis/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (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)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [ChestX-ray8: Hospital-scale Chest X-ray Database and Benchmarks on Weakly-Supervised Classification and Localization of Common Thorax Diseases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02315/) (2017)
- [VMamba: Visual State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10166/) (2024)
- [Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08318/) (2018)
- [U-Mamba: Enhancing Long-range Dependency for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04722/) (2024)
- [Big Self-Supervised Models Advance Medical Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05224/) (2021)
- [VM-UNet: Vision Mamba UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02491/) (2024)
- [SegMamba: Long-range Sequential Modeling Mamba For 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13560/) (2024)
- [Generative Adversarial Network in Medical Imaging: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07294/) (2018)
- [Unsupervised Medical Image Translation with Adversarial Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08208/) (2022)
- [Cross-modal Memory Networks for Radiology Report Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13258/) (2022)
- [ResViT: Residual vision transformers for multi-modal medical image synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.16031/) (2021)
- [A U-Net Based Discriminator for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12655/) (2020)
- [Hi-Net: Hybrid-fusion Network for Multi-modal MR Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05000/) (2020)
- [TransMed: Transformers Advance Multi-modal Medical Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05940/) (2021)
- [GANs for Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06222/) (2018)
- [A Morphology Focused Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Synthesis of Histopathology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13167/) (2022)
- [Radiology Report Generation with a Learned Knowledge Base and Multi-modal Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.15011/) (2021)
- [Generation of Anonymous Chest Radiographs Using Latent Diffusion Models for Training Thoracic Abnormality Classification Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01323/) (2022)
- [Progressive Transformer-Based Generation of Radiology Reports](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09777/) (2021)
- [A Gentle Introduction to Deep Learning in Medical Image Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05401/) (2018)
- [DiffInfinite: Large Mask-Image Synthesis via Parallel Random Patch Diffusion in Histopathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13384/) (2023)
- [Learning Implicit Brain MRI Manifolds with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01847/) (2018)
- [High-resolution medical image synthesis using progressively grown generative adversarial networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.03144/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [I2I-Mamba: Multi-modal medical image synthesis via selective state space modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14022/) (2024)
- [Mamba in Vision: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03105/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Mamba Architectures for Medical Image Analysis: Classification, Segmentation, Restoration and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02362/) (2024)
- [Deformation-Recovery Diffusion Model (DRDM): Instance Deformation for Image Manipulation and Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07295/) (2024)
- [Toward Medical Deepfake Detection: A Comprehensive Dataset and Novel Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15711/) (2025)
- [DiffuMamba: High-Throughput Diffusion LMs with Mamba Backbone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15927/) (2025)
- [Proxy Prompt: Endowing SAM and SAM 2 with Auto-Interactive-Prompt for Medical Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03501/) (2025)
- [Medical Image Segmentation Using Advanced Unet: VMSE-Unet and VM-Unet CBAM+](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00511/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the realm of smart healthcare, researchers enhance the scale and diversity of medical datasets through medical image synthesis. However, existing methods are limited by CNN local perception and Transformer quadratic complexity, making it difficult to balance structural texture consistency. To this end, we propose the Vision Mamba DDPM (VM-DDPM) based on State Space Model (SSM), fully combining CNN local perception and SSM global modeling capabilities, while maintaining linear computational complexity. Specifically, we designed a multi-level feature extraction module called Multi-level State Space Block (MSSBlock), and a basic unit of encoder-decoder structure called State Space Layer (SSLayer) for medical pathological images. Besides, we designed a simple, Plug-and-Play, zero-parameter Sequence Regeneration strategy for the Cross-Scan Module (CSM), which enabled the S6 module to fully perceive the spatial features of the 2D image and stimulate the generalization potential of the model. To our best knowledge, this is the first medical image synthesis model based on the SSM-CNN hybrid architecture. Our experimental evaluation on three datasets of different scales, i.e., ACDC, BraTS2018, and ChestXRay, as well as qualitative evaluation by radiologists, demonstrate that VM-DDPM achieves state-of-the-art performance.