# A Survey of fMRI to Image Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16861 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16861/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [MLP-Mixer: An all-MLP Architecture for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01601/) (2021)
- [Reconstructing the Mind's Eye: fMRI-to-Image with Contrastive Learning and Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18274/) (2023)
- [Seeing Beyond the Brain: Conditional Diffusion Model with Sparse Masked Modeling for Vision Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.06956/) (2022)
- [Generic decoding of seen and imagined objects using hierarchical visual features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.06479/) (2015)
- [MindEye2: Shared-Subject Models Enable fMRI-To-Image With 1 Hour of Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11207/) (2024)
- [Natural scene reconstruction from fMRI signals using generative latent diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05334/) (2023)
- [Mind Reader: Reconstructing complex images from brain activities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01769/) (2022)
- [Cinematic Mindscapes: High-quality Video Reconstruction from Brain Activity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11675/) (2023)
- [From voxels to pixels and back: Self-supervision in natural-image reconstruction from fMRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02431/) (2019)
- [MindBridge: A Cross-Subject Brain Decoding Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07850/) (2024)
- [BOLD5000: A public fMRI dataset of 5000 images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01281/) (2018)
- [Decoding Visual Neural Representations by Multimodal Learning of Brain-Visual-Linguistic Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06756/) (2022)
- [Neural Encoding and Decoding with Deep Learning for Dynamic Natural Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03425/) (2016)
- [Reconstruction of Perceived Images from fMRI Patterns and Semantic Brain Exploration using Instance-Conditioned GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12692/) (2022)
- [Decoding natural image stimuli from fMRI data with a surface-based convolutional network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02409/) (2022)
- [MindDiffuser: Controlled Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity with Semantic and Structural Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04249/) (2023)
- [UniBrain: Unify Image Reconstruction and Captioning All in One Diffusion Model from Human Brain Activity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07428/) (2023)
- [NeuroPictor: Refining fMRI-to-Image Reconstruction via Multi-individual Pretraining and Multi-level Modulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18211/) (2024)
- [Reconstructing Perceptive Images from Brain Activity by Shape-Semantic GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12083/) (2021)
- [UMBRAE: Unified Multimodal Brain Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07202/) (2024)
- [MindTuner: Cross-Subject Visual Decoding with Visual Fingerprint and Semantic Correction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12630/) (2024)
- [Controllable Mind Visual Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10135/) (2023)
- [NeuroClips: Towards High-fidelity and Smooth fMRI-to-Video Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19452/) (2024)
- [Through their eyes: multi-subject Brain Decoding with simple alignment techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00627/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Logic-in-Frames: Dynamic Keyframe Search via Visual Semantic-Logical Verification for Long Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13139/) (2025)
- [VSI: Visual Subtitle Integration for Keyframe Selection to enhance Long Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06869/) (2025)
- [SemVideo: Reconstructs What You Watch from Brain Activity via Hierarchical Semantic Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21819/) (2026)
- [SODA: Sensitivity-Oriented Dynamic Acceleration for Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07057/) (2026)
- [Statistical Learning for Latent Embedding Alignment with Application to Brain Encoding and Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21042/) (2026)
- [Brain3D: EEG-to-3D Decoding of Visual Representations via Multimodal Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08068/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based image reconstruction plays a pivotal role in decoding human perception, with applications in neuroscience and brain-computer interfaces. While recent advancements in deep learning and large-scale datasets have driven progress, challenges such as data scarcity, cross-subject variability, and low semantic consistency persist. To address these issues, we introduce the concept of fMRI-to-Image Learning (fMRI2Image) and present the first systematic review in this field. This review highlights key challenges, categorizes methodologies such as fMRI signal encoding, feature mapping, and image generator. Finally, promising research directions are proposed to advance this emerging frontier, providing a reference for future studies.