mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Self-Consistent Recursive Diffusion Bridge for Medical Image Translation

arXiv 2405.06789 ↗First posted 10 May 2024eess.IV cs.CVcited by 26

On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation

Abstract (arXiv)

Denoising diffusion models (DDM) have gained recent traction in medical image translation given improved training stability over adversarial models. DDMs learn a multi-step denoising transformation to progressively map random Gaussian-noise images onto target-modality images, while receiving stationary guidance from source-modality images. As this denoising transformation diverges significantly from the task-relevant source-to-target transformation, DDMs can suffer from weak source-modality guidance. Here, we propose a novel self-consistent recursive diffusion bridge (SelfRDB) for improved performance in medical image translation. Unlike DDMs, SelfRDB employs a novel forward process with start- and end-points defined based on target and source images, respectively. Intermediate image samples across the process are expressed via a normal distribution with mean taken as a convex combination of start-end points, and variance from additive noise. Unlike regular diffusion bridges that prescribe zero variance at start-end points and high variance at mid-point of the process, we propose a novel noise scheduling with monotonically increasing variance towards the end-point in order to boost generalization performance and facilitate information transfer between the two modalities. To further enhance sampling accuracy in each reverse step, we propose a novel sampling procedure where the network recursively generates a transient-estimate of the target image until convergence onto a self-consistent solution. Comprehensive analyses in multi-contrast MRI and MRI-CT translation indicate that SelfRDB offers superior performance against competing methods.

Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 42 of its 83 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 May 2024.

Builds on

42 of 83 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Learning Fourier-Constrained Diffusion Bridges for MRI Reconstruction2 Aug
  2. 2023Self-Supervised MRI Reconstruction with Unrolled Diffusion Models29 Jun
  3. 2022Unsupervised Medical Image Translation with Adversarial Diffusion Models17 Jul
  4. 2022Adaptive Diffusion Priors for Accelerated MRI Reconstruction12 Jul
  5. 2022A Novel Unified Conditional Score-based Generative Framework for Multi-modal Medical Image Completion7 Jul
  6. 2022Towards performant and reliable undersampled MR reconstruction via diffusion model sampling8 Mar
  7. 2021Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Models15 Nov
  8. 2021Score-based diffusion models for accelerated MRI8 Oct

Other references · 34

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  2. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
  3. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
  4. 2016Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networkscited by 4,527
  5. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,101
  6. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,761
  7. 2021Tackling the Generative Learning Trilemma with Denoising Diffusion GANscited by 516
  8. 2021Come-Closer-Diffuse-Faster: Accelerating Conditional Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems through Stochastic Contractioncited by 307
  9. 2021Likelihood Training of Schr"odinger Bridge using Forward-Backward SDEs Theorycited by 219
  10. 2022Dual Diffusion Implicit Bridges for Image-to-Image Translationcited by 213
  11. 2021ResViT: Residual vision transformers for multi-modal medical image synthesiscited by 177
  12. 2023Inversion by Direct Iteration: An Alternative to Denoising Diffusion for Image Restorationcited by 165
22 more
  1. 2018MedGAN: Medical Image Translation using GANscited by 152
  2. 2018Image Synthesis in Multi-Contrast MRI with Conditional Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 132
  3. 2022Soft Diffusion: Score Matching for General Corruptionscited by 102
  4. 2019Missing MRI Pulse Sequence Synthesis using Multi-Modal Generative Adversarial Networkcited by 98
  5. 2023Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation via Neural Schr"odinger Bridgecited by 96
  6. 2017Deep MR to CT Synthesis using Unpaired Datacited by 86
  7. 2020Hi-Net: Hybrid-fusion Network for Multi-modal MR Image Synthesiscited by 86
  8. 2021Unsupervised MRI Reconstruction via Zero-Shot Learned Adversarial Transformerscited by 77
  9. 2022Conversion Between CT and MRI Images Using Diffusion and Score-Matching Modelscited by 69
  10. 2023Direct Diffusion Bridge using Data Consistency for Inverse Problemscited by 66
  11. 2023Unified Multi-Modal Image Synthesis for Missing Modality Imputationcited by 40
  12. 2019DiamondGAN: Unified Multi-Modal Generative Adversarial Networks for MRI Sequences Synthesiscited by 36
  13. 2019mustGAN: Multi-Stream Generative Adversarial Networks for MR Image Synthesiscited by 34
  14. 2017Simultaneous Super-Resolution and Cross-Modality Synthesis of 3D Medical Images using Weakly-Supervised Joint Convolutional Sparse Codingcited by 33
  15. 2019CollaGAN : Collaborative GAN for Missing Image Data Imputationcited by 33
  16. 2022Federated Learning of Generative Image Priors for MRI Reconstructioncited by 33
  17. 2018Deep CT to MR Synthesis using Paired and Unpaired Datacited by 31
  18. 2018Unpaired Brain MR-to-CT Synthesis using a Structure-Constrained CycleGANcited by 31
  19. 2023Schrodinger Bridges Beat Diffusion Models on Text-to-Speech Synthesiscited by 30
  20. 2021TranSMS: Transformers for Super-Resolution Calibration in Magnetic Particle Imagingcited by 18
  21. 2023DreaMR: Diffusion-driven Counterfactual Explanation for Functional MRIcited by 14
  22. 2023An Explainable Deep Framework: Towards Task-Specific Fusion for Multi-to-One MRI Synthesiscited by 9

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 8; 2025: 7; 2026: 11.

26 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2024I2I-Mamba: Multi-modal medical image synthesis via selective state space modelingcited by 26
  2. 2024DenoMamba: A fused state-space model for low-dose CT denoisingcited by 11
  3. 2024Physics-Driven Autoregressive State Space Models for Medical Image Reconstructioncited by 8
  4. 2025Regression is all you need for medical image translationcited by 8
  5. 2024Physics-Inspired Generative Models in Medical Imaging: A Reviewcited by 5
  6. 2024Back-in-Time Diffusion: Unsupervised Detection of Medical Deepfakescited by 5
  7. 2025Generative Autoregressive Transformers for Model-Agnostic Federated MRI Reconstructioncited by 5
  8. 2024Learning Modality-Aware Representations: Adaptive Group-wise Interaction Network for Multimodal MRI Synthesiscited by 4
  9. 2025Virtual Full-stack Scanning of Brain MRI via Imputing Any Quantised Codecited by 4
  10. 2026Adaptive Domain Shift in Diffusion Models for Cross-Modality Image Translationcited by 3
  11. 2026Contrast-X: A Multi-Modal Contrast Image Synthesis Benchmark and Universal Modality Flow Matchingcited by 2
  12. 2026Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation via a Self-Supervised Semantic Bridgecited by 2
14 more
  1. 2024Self-Consistent Nested Diffusion Bridge for Accelerated MRI Reconstructioncited by 1
  2. 2025Meta-Entity Driven Triplet Mining for Aligning Medical Vision-Language Modelscited by 1
  3. 2025BronchoGAN: Anatomically consistent and domain-agnostic image-to-image translation for video bronchoscopycited by 1
  4. 2026Uncertainty-Aware Distribution-to-Distribution Flow Matching for Scientific Imagingcited by 1
  5. 2024Principled Feature Disentanglement for High-Fidelity Unified Brain MRI Synthesiscited by 0
  6. 2025Path and Bone-Contour Regularized Unpaired MRI-to-CT Translationcited by 0
  7. 2025Predicting before Reconstruction: A generative prior framework for MRI accelerationcited by 0
  8. 2026Recover Semantics First, Generate Better: Improved Latent Modeling for 3D MRI Reconstruction and Cross-Contrast Synthesiscited by 0
  9. 2026Prob-BBDM: a Probabilistic Brownian Bridge Diffusion Model for MRI sequence image-to-image translationcited by 0
  10. 2026Do Not Break the Vessels: Structure-Preserving Mean Flow for Vascular Image Translationcited by 0
  11. 2026Heterogeneity-Adaptive Diffusion Schrodinger Bridge for PET-Guided Whole-Body MRI Translationcited by 0
  12. 2026Posterior Samplings are Missing Modalities Generators for Medical Image Translationcited by 0
  13. 2026VeCAS: Vessel-Focused Contrast-Free Angiogram Synthesis for Vascular Interventionscited by 0
  14. 2026PredRA: Fast Medical Image Translation by Deterministic Component Extraction and Controlled Stochastic Refinementcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Deterministic Medical Image Translation via High-fidelity Brownian Bridges
  2. 2024A Domain Translation Framework with an Adversarial Denoising Diffusion Model to Generate Synthetic Datasets of Echocardiography Images
  3. 2023Zero-shot Medical Image Translation via Frequency-Guided Diffusion Models
  4. 2024Cascaded Multi-path Shortcut Diffusion Model for Medical Image Translation
  5. 2023Denoising Diffusion Bridge Models
  6. 2023DDM2: Self-Supervised Diffusion MRI Denoising with Generative Diffusion Models
  7. 2025DiffDenoise: Self-Supervised Medical Image Denoising with Conditional Diffusion Models
  8. 2022The Swiss Army Knife for Image-to-Image Translation: Multi-Task Diffusion Models