mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Physics-Inspired Generative Models in Medical Imaging: A Review

arXiv 2407.10856 ↗First posted 15 Jul 2024eess.IV cs.CV physics.med-phcited by 5

On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation

Abstract (arXiv)

Physics-inspired Generative Models (GMs), in particular Diffusion Models (DMs) and Poisson Flow Models (PFMs), enhance Bayesian methods and promise great utility in medical imaging. This review examines the transformative role of such generative methods. First, a variety of physics-inspired GMs, including Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPMs), Score-based Diffusion Models (SDMs), and Poisson Flow Generative Models (PFGMs and PFGM++), are revisited, with an emphasis on their accuracy, robustness as well as acceleration. Then, major applications of physics-inspired GMs in medical imaging are presented, comprising image reconstruction, image generation, and image analysis. Finally, future research directions are brainstormed, including unification of physics-inspired GMs, integration with Vision-Language Models (VLMs), and potential novel applications of GMs. Since the development of generative methods has been rapid, this review will hopefully give peers and learners a timely snapshot of this new family of physics-driven generative models and help capitalize their enormous potential for medical imaging.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 78 of its 118 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Jul 2024.

Builds on

78 of 118 references.

Closest ancestors · 35

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Deformation-Recovery Diffusion Model (DRDM): Instance Deformation for Image Manipulation and Synthesis10 Jul
  2. 20242.5D Multi-view Averaging Diffusion Model for 3D Medical Image Translation: Application to Low-count PET Reconstruction with CT-less Attenuation Correction12 Jun
  3. 2024Inpainting Pathology in Lumbar Spine MRI with Latent Diffusion4 Jun
  4. 2024FlowSDF: Flow Matching for Medical Image Segmentation Using Distance Transforms28 May
  5. 2024Memory-efficient High-resolution OCT Volume Synthesis with Cascaded Amortized Latent Diffusion Models26 May
  6. 2024Blaze3DM: Marry Triplane Representation with Diffusion for 3D Medical Inverse Problem Solving24 May
  7. 2024Fast-DDPM: Fast Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for Medical Image-to-Image Generation23 May
  8. 2024Self-Consistent Recursive Diffusion Bridge for Medical Image Translation10 May
  9. 2024DP-MDM: Detail-Preserving MR Reconstruction via Multiple Diffusion Models9 May
  10. 2024Dose-aware Diffusion Model for 3D PET Image Denoising: Multi-institutional Validation with Reader Study and Real Low-dose Data2 May
  11. 2024DPER: Diffusion Prior Driven Neural Representation for Limited Angle and Sparse View CT Reconstruction27 Apr
  12. 2024Ultrasound Imaging based on the Variance of a Diffusion Restoration Model22 Mar
23 more
  1. 2024QSMDiff: Unsupervised 3D Diffusion Models for Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping21 Mar
  2. 2024Generative Enhancement for 3D Medical Images19 Mar
  3. 2024Diffusion Models with Implicit Guidance for Medical Anomaly Detection13 Mar
  4. 2024MedM2G: Unifying Medical Multi-Modal Generation via Cross-Guided Diffusion with Visual Invariant7 Mar
  5. 2024Anatomically-Controllable Medical Image Generation with Segmentation-Guided Diffusion Models7 Feb
  6. 2024MAEDiff: Masked Autoencoder-enhanced Diffusion Models for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in Brain Images19 Jan
  7. 2023CT Reconstruction using Diffusion Posterior Sampling conditioned on a Nonlinear Measurement Model3 Dec
  8. 2023Adaptive Latent Diffusion Model for 3D Medical Image to Image Translation: Multi-modal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study1 Nov
  9. 2023Boosting Dermatoscopic Lesion Segmentation via Diffusion Models with Visual and Textual Prompts4 Oct
  10. 2023Correlated and Multi-frequency Diffusion Modeling for Highly Under-sampled MRI Reconstruction2 Sep
  11. 2023Score-Based Generative Models for PET Image Reconstruction27 Aug
  12. 2023Ultrasound Image Reconstruction with Denoising Diffusion Restoration Models29 Jul
  13. 2023Make-A-Volume: Leveraging Latent Diffusion Models for Cross-Modality 3D Brain MRI Synthesis19 Jul
  14. 2023Diffusion Probabilistic Priors for Zero-Shot Low-Dose CT Image Denoising25 May
  15. 2023BerDiff: Conditional Bernoulli Diffusion Model for Medical Image Segmentation10 Apr
  16. 2023Cascaded Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Chest X-ray Synthesis20 Mar
  17. 2023Improving 3D Imaging with Pre-Trained Perpendicular 2D Diffusion Models15 Mar
  18. 2022Solving 3D Inverse Problems using Pre-trained 2D Diffusion Models19 Nov
  19. 2022Patch-Based Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Sparse-View CT Reconstruction18 Nov
  20. 2022Diffusion Models for Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey14 Nov
  21. 2022Adaptive Diffusion Priors for Accelerated MRI Reconstruction12 Jul
  22. 2021Diffusion Models for Implicit Image Segmentation Ensembles6 Dec
  23. 2021Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Models15 Nov

Other references · 43

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  3. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
  4. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  5. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
  6. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
  7. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
  8. 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,058
  9. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
  10. 2023Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spacescited by 4,718
  11. 2016Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networkscited by 4,527
  12. 2019Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distributioncited by 4,101
31 more
  1. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
  2. 2022Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Modelscited by 3,045
  3. 2023Consistency Modelscited by 1,822
  4. 2022Diffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse Problemscited by 1,416
  5. 2022Diffusion Models in Vision: A Surveycited by 1,015
  6. 2024Chameleon: Mixed-Modal Early-Fusion Foundation Modelscited by 927
  7. 2023Latent Consistency Models: Synthesizing High-Resolution Images with Few-Step Inferencecited by 846
  8. 2022Improving Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems using Manifold Constraintscited by 508
  9. 2023Consistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of Diffusioncited by 459
  10. 2023Improved Techniques for Training Consistency Modelscited by 439
  11. 2021Come-Closer-Diffuse-Faster: Accelerating Conditional Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems through Stochastic Contractioncited by 307
  12. 2023LLM-grounded Diffusion: Enhancing Prompt Understanding of Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Large Language Modelscited by 243
  13. 2023Decomposed Diffusion Sampler for Accelerating Large-Scale Inverse Problemscited by 132
  14. 2022Poisson Flow Generative Modelscited by 95
  15. 2020Hi-Net: Hybrid-fusion Network for Multi-modal MR Image Synthesiscited by 86
  16. 2023PFGM++: Unlocking the Potential of Physics-Inspired Generative Modelscited by 73
  17. 2021Dynamic CT Reconstruction from Limited Views with Implicit Neural Representations and Parametric Motion Fieldscited by 71
  18. 2022Model-Based Deep Learning: On the Intersection of Deep Learning and Optimizationcited by 50
  19. 2022Self-Supervised Coordinate Projection Network for Sparse-View Computed Tomographycited by 31
  20. 2023A Survey of Diffusion Based Image Generation Models: Issues and Their Solutionscited by 25
  21. 2023GenPhys: From Physical Processes to Generative Modelscited by 19
  22. 2021GAN-based Data Augmentation for Chest X-ray Classificationcited by 18
  23. 2017Deep Generative Adversarial Networks for Compressed Sensing Automates MRIcited by 15
  24. 2022RPLHR-CT Dataset and Transformer Baseline for Volumetric Super-Resolution from CT Scanscited by 15
  25. 2024Computation-Efficient Era: A Comprehensive Survey of State Space Models in Medical Image Analysiscited by 14
  26. 2024LighTDiff: Surgical Endoscopic Image Low-Light Enhancement with T-Diffusioncited by 12
  27. 2016Image Prediction for Limited-angle Tomography via Deep Learning with Convolutional Neural Networkcited by 9
  28. 20202-Step Sparse-View CT Reconstruction with a Domain-Specific Perceptual Networkcited by 9
  29. 2024Generating Counterfactual Trajectories with Latent Diffusion Models for Concept Discoverycited by 8
  30. 2024Low-dose CT Denoising with Language-engaged Dual-space Alignmentcited by 7
  31. 2023JCCS-PFGM: A Novel Circle-Supervision based Poisson Flow Generative Model for Multiphase CECT Progressive Low-Dose Reconstruction with Joint Conditioncited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 2.

5 papers.

  1. 2025Lung-DDPM+: Efficient Thoracic CT Image Synthesis using Diffusion Probabilistic Modelcited by 4
  2. 2025FoundDiff: Foundational Diffusion Model for Generalizable Low-Dose CT Denoisingcited by 2
  3. 2025Medical Image Segmentation Using Advanced Unet: VMSE-Unet and VM-Unet CBAM+cited by 0
  4. 2026Foundation Models for Medical Imaging: Status, Challenges, and Directionscited by 0
  5. 2026Structural MRI Synthesis for Alzheimer's Disease via Conditional Diffusion on Anatomical Maskscited by 0

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  1. 2025Computationally Efficient Diffusion Models in Medical Imaging: A Comprehensive Review
  2. 2024Physics-Informed Latent Diffusion for Multimodal Brain MRI Synthesis
  3. 2023A Survey of Emerging Applications of Diffusion Probabilistic Models in MRI
  4. 2022Medical Diffusion: Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Medical Image Generation
  5. 2024Diffusion as Sound Propagation: Physics-inspired Model for Ultrasound Image Generation
  6. 2023Interpretable ODE-style Generative Diffusion Model via Force Field Construction
  7. 2024Comparative Analysis of Diffusion Generative Models in Computational Pathology
  8. 2023MRI Reconstruction with Side Information using Diffusion Models