# Uncertainty-Aware Regularization for Image-to-Image Translation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01705 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01705/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Diffusion Models for Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07804/) (2022)
- [Precomputed Real-Time Texture Synthesis with Markovian Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.04382/) (2016)
- [MedGAN: Medical Image Translation using GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.06397/) (2018)
- [Image Synthesis in Multi-Contrast MRI with Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01221/) (2018)
- [Translating and Segmenting Multimodal Medical Volumes with Cycle- and Shape-Consistency Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09655/) (2018)
- [ArSDM: Colonoscopy Images Synthesis with Adaptive Refinement Semantic Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01111/) (2023)
- [A deep learning framework for quality assessment and restoration in video endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07073/) (2019)
- [Uncertainty-Guided Progressive GANs for Medical Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15542/) (2021)
- [Robustness via Uncertainty-aware Cycle Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.12467/) (2021)
- [Uncertainty-aware GAN with Adaptive Loss for Robust MRI Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03343/) (2021)
- [EndoL2H: Deep Super-Resolution for Capsule Endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05459/) (2020)
- [Validating uncertainty in medical image translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.04639/) (2020)
- [Toward Clinically Assisted Colorectal Polyp Recognition via Structured Cross-modal Representation Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11826/) (2022)
- [Uncertainty Estimation in Contrast-Enhanced MR Image Translation with Multi-Axis Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12153/) (2023)

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

- [Interpretable Similarity of Synthetic Image Utility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17080/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The importance of quantifying uncertainty in deep networks has become paramount for reliable real-world applications. In this paper, we propose a method to improve uncertainty estimation in medical Image-to-Image (I2I) translation. Our model integrates aleatoric uncertainty and employs Uncertainty-Aware Regularization (UAR) inspired by simple priors to refine uncertainty estimates and enhance reconstruction quality. We show that by leveraging simple priors on parameters, our approach captures more robust uncertainty maps, effectively refining them to indicate precisely where the network encounters difficulties, while being less affected by noise. Our experiments demonstrate that UAR not only improves translation performance, but also provides better uncertainty estimations, particularly in the presence of noise and artifacts. We validate our approach using two medical imaging datasets, showcasing its effectiveness in maintaining high confidence in familiar regions while accurately identifying areas of uncertainty in novel/ambiguous scenarios.
