# SurGen: Text-Guided Diffusion Model for Surgical Video Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.14028 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14028/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 32 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Aug 2024.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [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)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [The Kinetics Human Action Video Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.06950/) (2017)
- [ViViT: A Video Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15691/) (2021)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01717/) (2018)
- [Language Model Beats Diffusion -- Tokenizer is Key to Visual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05737/) (2023)
- [GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17080/) (2023)
- [Lumiere: A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12945/) (2024)
- [EndoNet: A Deep Architecture for Recognition Tasks on Laparoscopic Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.03012/) (2016)
- [DriveDreamer: Towards Real-world-driven World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09777/) (2023)
- [Adapted Large Language Models Can Outperform Medical Experts in Clinical Text Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07430/) (2023)
- [Learning Spatio-Temporal Features with 3D Residual Networks for Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07632/) (2017)
- [DriveGAN: Towards a Controllable High-Quality Neural Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.15060/) (2021)
- [VDT: General-purpose Video Diffusion Transformers via Mask Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13311/) (2023)
- [CT2Rep: Automated Radiology Report Generation for 3D Medical Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06801/) (2024)
- [Adapting Pretrained Vision-Language Foundational Models to Medical Imaging Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04133/) (2022)
- [Endora: Video Generation Models as Endoscopy Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11050/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Long Video Generation: Challenges, Methods, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16407/) (2024)
- [Style-Aware Radiology Report Generation with RadGraph and Few-Shot Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17811/) (2023)
- [Interactive Generation of Laparoscopic Videos with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06537/) (2024)
- [Navigating the Synthetic Realm: Harnessing Diffusion-based Models for Laparoscopic Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03043/) (2023)
- [A Generalist Model for Diverse Text-Guided Medical Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09806/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [SurgSora: Object-Aware Diffusion Model for Controllable Surgical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14018/) (2024)
- [Cosmos-H-Surgical: Learning Surgical Robot Policies from Videos via World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23162/) (2025)
- [Surgical Vision World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02904/) (2025)
- [Ophora: A Large-Scale Data-Driven Text-Guided Ophthalmic Surgical Video Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07449/) (2025)
- [MedGen: Unlocking Medical Video Generation by Scaling Granularly-annotated Medical Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05675/) (2025)
- [Surgical Scene Understanding in the Era of Foundation AI Models: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14886/) (2025)
- [SG2VID: Scene Graphs Enable Fine-Grained Control for Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03082/) (2025)
- [From Articulated Kinematics to Routed Visual Control for Action-Conditioned Surgical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08712/) (2026)
- [SurGrID: Controllable Surgical Simulation via Scene Graph to Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07945/) (2025)
- [Artificial Intelligence for Biomedical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07619/) (2024)
- [Realistic Surgical Simulation from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02359/) (2024)
- [From Preferences to Prejudice: The Role of Alignment Tuning in Shaping Social Bias in Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17247/) (2025)
- [Mission Balance: Generating Under-represented Class Samples using Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09858/) (2025)
- [Mitigating Surgical Data Imbalance with Dual-Prediction Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07345/) (2025)
- [Multi-scale Temporal Prediction via Incremental Generation and Multi-agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17429/) (2025)
- [Real-Time Visual Obstruction Detection in Surgical Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00232/) (2026)
- [Surg-UniWorld: A Unified Surgical World Model with Multimodal Control Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06770/) (2026)
- [Towards Surgical World-Action Modeling: A Preliminary Joint Visual-Trajectory Forecasting for Surgical Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20284/) (2026)
- [Beyond Masks and Trajectories: Flow-Guided Latent Action Injection for Stable Surgical Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09800/) (2026)
- [Hierarchical Curriculum Learning for Surgical Video Generation: Focusing on Bilateral Axillo-Breast Approach Robotic Thyroidectomy Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17684/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion-based video generation models have made significant strides, producing outputs with improved visual fidelity, temporal coherence, and user control. These advancements hold great promise for improving surgical education by enabling more realistic, diverse, and interactive simulation environments. In this study, we introduce SurGen, a text-guided diffusion model tailored for surgical video synthesis. SurGen produces videos with the highest resolution and longest duration among existing surgical video generation models. We validate the visual and temporal quality of the outputs using standard image and video generation metrics. Additionally, we assess their alignment to the corresponding text prompts through a deep learning classifier trained on surgical data. Our results demonstrate the potential of diffusion models to serve as valuable educational tools for surgical trainees.