# Transfer Learning for Diffusion Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.16876 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16876/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion foundations and sampling, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 43 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 May 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion foundations and sampling](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-foundations-and-sampling/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [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)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [DPM-Solver: A Fast ODE Solver for Diffusion Probabilistic Model Sampling in Around 10 Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00927/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14687/) (2022)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [Text2Video-Zero: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models are Zero-Shot Video Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13439/) (2023)
- [CSDI: Conditional Score-based Diffusion Models for Probabilistic Time Series Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03502/) (2021)
- [DPOK: Reinforcement Learning for Fine-tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16381/) (2023)
- [Universal Guidance for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07121/) (2023)
- [Reliable Fidelity and Diversity Metrics for Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.09797/) (2020)
- [Aligning Text-to-Image Models using Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12192/) (2023)
- [Sliced Score Matching: A Scalable Approach to Density and Score Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07088/) (2019)
- [Your Diffusion Model is Secretly a Zero-Shot Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16203/) (2023)
- [Few-shot Image Generation via Cross-domain Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06820/) (2021)
- [Conditional Image Generation with Score-Based Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13606/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning for ECG Analysis: Benchmarks and Insights from PTB-XL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13701/) (2020)
- [Contrastive Energy Prediction for Exact Energy-Guided Diffusion Sampling in Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12824/) (2023)
- [Few-shot Image Generation with Elastic Weight Consolidation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02780/) (2020)
- [Telescoping Density-Ratio Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.12204/) (2020)
- [DiffFit: Unlocking Transferability of Large Diffusion Models via Simple Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06648/) (2023)
- [Few Shot Generative Model Adaption via Relaxed Spatial Structural Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04121/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Discrete Guidance Matching: Exact Guidance for Discrete Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21912/) (2025)
- [Learning Structure-Semantic Evolution Trajectories for Graph Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10506/) (2026)
- [Schr"odinger bridge for generative AI: Soft-constrained formulation and convergence analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11829/) (2025)
- [Guided Transfer Learning for Discrete Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10877/) (2025)
- [Alignment of Diffusion Model and Flow Matching for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00413/) (2026)
- [Delta Sampling: Data-Free Knowledge Transfer Across Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03056/) (2025)
- [On the Limits of Latent Reuse in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13448/) (2026)
- [GUST: Quantifying Free-Form Geometric Uncertainty of Metamaterials Using Small Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12051/) (2025)
- [From Synthetic Data to Real Restorations: Diffusion Model for Patient-specific Dental Crown Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26588/) (2026)
- [Ambient Discrete Diffusion: Using the Wrong Data at the Right Time for Data Efficient Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12340/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models, a specific type of generative model, have achieved unprecedented performance in recent years and consistently produce high-quality synthetic samples. A critical prerequisite for their notable success lies in the presence of a substantial number of training samples, which can be impractical in real-world applications due to high collection costs or associated risks. Consequently, various finetuning and regularization approaches have been proposed to transfer knowledge from existing pre-trained models to specific target domains with limited data. This paper introduces the Transfer Guided Diffusion Process (TGDP), a novel approach distinct from conventional finetuning and regularization methods. We prove that the optimal diffusion model for the target domain integrates pre-trained diffusion models on the source domain with additional guidance from a domain classifier. We further extend TGDP to a conditional version for modeling the joint distribution of data and its corresponding labels, together with two additional regularization terms to enhance the model performance. We validate the effectiveness of TGDP on both simulated and real-world datasets.