# Artificial Immunofluorescence in a Flash: Rapid Synthetic Imaging from Brightfield Through Residual Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.17882 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17882/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 16 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Medical imaging and segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/medical-imaging-and-segmentation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09841/) (2020)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [The Open Images Dataset V4: Unified image classification, object detection, and visual relationship detection at scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00982/) (2018)
- [ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shifting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12348/) (2023)
- [DatasetGAN: Efficient Labeled Data Factory with Minimal Human Effort](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06490/) (2021)
- [Cell Detection with Star-convex Polygons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03535/) (2018)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis via Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00050/) (2022)
- [Enhancing Semantic Fidelity in Text-to-Image Synthesis: Attention Regulation in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06381/) (2024)
- [On Inference Stability for Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12431/) (2023)
- [Extracting quantitative biological information from brightfield cell images using deep learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12986/) (2020)
- [SegmentAnything helps microscopy images based automatic and quantitative organoid detection and analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04190/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [MONET -- Virtual Cell Painting of Brightfield Images and Time Lapses Using Reference Consistent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11928/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Immunofluorescent (IF) imaging is crucial for visualizing biomarker expressions, cell morphology and assessing the effects of drug treatments on sub-cellular components. IF imaging needs extra staining process and often requiring cell fixation, therefore it may also introduce artefects and alter endogenouous cell morphology. Some IF stains are expensive or not readily available hence hindering experiments. Recent diffusion models, which synthesise high-fidelity IF images from easy-to-acquire brightfield (BF) images, offer a promising solution but are hindered by training instability and slow inference times due to the noise diffusion process. This paper presents a novel method for the conditional synthesis of IF images directly from BF images along with cell segmentation masks. Our approach employs a Residual Diffusion process that enhances stability and significantly reduces inference time. We performed a critical evaluation against other image-to-image synthesis models, including UNets, GANs, and advanced diffusion models. Our model demonstrates significant improvements in image quality (p<0.05 in MSE, PSNR, and SSIM), inference speed (26 times faster than competing diffusion models), and accurate segmentation results for both nuclei and cell bodies (0.77 and 0.63 mean IOU for nuclei and cell true positives, respectively). This paper is a substantial advancement in the field, providing robust and efficient tools for cell image analysis.