# GazeFusion: Saliency-Guided Image Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04191 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04191/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 28 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Video generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/video-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [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)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [Frozen in Time: A Joint Video and Image Encoder for End-to-End Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00650/) (2021)
- [Text2Video-Zero: Text-to-Image Diffusion Models are Zero-Shot Video Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13439/) (2023)
- [No-Reference Image Quality Assessment via Transformers, Relative Ranking, and Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06858/) (2021)
- [Salient Object Detection: A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.02741/) (2015)
- [State of the Art on Diffusion Models for Visual Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07204/) (2023)
- [AUC Maximization in the Era of Big Data and AI: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15046/) (2022)
- [Unified Image and Video Saliency Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05477/) (2020)
- [Revisiting Video Saliency: A Large-scale Benchmark and a New Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07424/) (2018)
- [SalGAN: Visual Saliency Prediction with Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.01081/) (2017)
- [Deep Gaze I: Boosting Saliency Prediction with Feature Maps Trained on ImageNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1045/) (2014)
- [TASED-Net: Temporally-Aggregating Spatial Encoder-Decoder Network for Video Saliency Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.05786/) (2019)
- [Uncertainty Inspired RGB-D Saliency Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03075/) (2020)
- [Deep RGB-D Saliency Detection with Depth-Sensitive Attention and Automatic Multi-Modal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11832/) (2021)
- [DeepGaze IIE: Calibrated prediction in and out-of-domain for state-of-the-art saliency modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12441/) (2021)
- [CAT2000: A Large Scale Fixation Dataset for Boosting Saliency Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.03581/) (2015)
- [EML-NET:An Expandable Multi-Layer NETwork for Saliency Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01047/) (2018)
- [ScanGAN360: A Generative Model of Realistic Scanpaths for 360circ Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13922/) (2021)
- [Deep Saliency Prior for Reducing Visual Distraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01980/) (2021)
- [Look here! A parametric learning based approach to redirect visual attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05413/) (2020)
- [BubbleView: an interface for crowdsourcing image importance maps and tracking visual attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05150/) (2017)
- [Toward Optimized VR/AR Ergonomics: Modeling and Predicting User Neck Muscle Contraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14841/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Controllable Audio-Visual Viewpoint Generation from 360deg Spatial Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06060/) (2025)
- [Exploring Object-Aware Attention Guided Frame Association for RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26131/) (2025)
- [EEG-Driven Image Reconstruction with Saliency-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26391/) (2025)
- [Amplify What You Gaze At: Target Saliency Boosting in Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30733/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion models offer unprecedented image generation power given just a text prompt. While emerging approaches for controlling diffusion models have enabled users to specify the desired spatial layouts of the generated content, they cannot predict or control where viewers will pay more attention due to the complexity of human vision. Recognizing the significance of attention-controllable image generation in practical applications, we present a saliency-guided framework to incorporate the data priors of human visual attention mechanisms into the generation process. Given a user-specified viewer attention distribution, our control module conditions a diffusion model to generate images that attract viewers' attention toward the desired regions. To assess the efficacy of our approach, we performed an eye-tracked user study and a large-scale model-based saliency analysis. The results evidence that both the cross-user eye gaze distributions and the saliency models' predictions align with the desired attention distributions. Lastly, we outline several applications, including interactive design of saliency guidance, attention suppression in unwanted regions, and adaptive generation for varied display/viewing conditions.