# ViCTr: Vital Consistency Transfer for Pathology Aware Image Synthesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.04963 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04963/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [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)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [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)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [One-step Diffusion with Distribution Matching Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18828/) (2023)
- [AMOS: A Large-Scale Abdominal Multi-Organ Benchmark for Versatile Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08023/) (2022)
- [Effective Data Augmentation With Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07944/) (2023)
- [MedSegDiff: Medical Image Segmentation with Diffusion Probabilistic Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00611/) (2022)
- [M3D: Advancing 3D Medical Image Analysis with Multi-Modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00578/) (2024)
- [Diverse Data Augmentation with Diffusions for Effective Test-time Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06038/) (2023)
- [Improving the Training of Rectified Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20320/) (2024)
- [Diversify Your Vision Datasets with Automatic Diffusion-Based Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16289/) (2023)
- [Medical Image Synthesis with Context-Aware Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.05362/) (2016)
- [Leaving Reality to Imagination: Robust Classification via Generated Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02503/) (2023)
- [On Mixup Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06049/) (2020)
- [DiffuseMix: Label-Preserving Data Augmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14881/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Models beat GANs on Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07501/) (2022)
- [IDiff-Face: Synthetic-based Face Recognition through Fizzy Identity-Conditioned Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04995/) (2023)
- [Multi-organ Segmentation over Partially Labeled Datasets with Multi-scale Feature Abstraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00208/) (2020)
- [Anatomically-Controllable Medical Image Generation with Segmentation-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05210/) (2024)
- [Towards Generalizable Tumor Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19470/) (2024)
- [AbdomenAtlas-8K: Annotating 8,000 CT Volumes for Multi-Organ Segmentation in Three Weeks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09666/) (2023)
- [A Bayesian Data Augmentation Approach for Learning Deep Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10564/) (2017)
- [DetDiffusion: Synergizing Generative and Perceptive Models for Enhanced Data Generation and Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13304/) (2024)

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

- [CytoDiff: AI-Driven Cytomorphology Image Synthesis for Medical Diagnostics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05063/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Synthesizing medical images remains challenging due to limited annotated pathological data, modality domain gaps, and the complexity of representing diffuse pathologies such as liver cirrhosis. Existing methods often struggle to maintain anatomical fidelity while accurately modeling pathological features, frequently relying on priors derived from natural images or inefficient multi-step sampling. In this work, we introduce ViCTr (Vital Consistency Transfer), a novel two-stage framework that combines a rectified flow trajectory with a Tweedie-corrected diffusion process to achieve high-fidelity, pathology-aware image synthesis. First, we pretrain ViCTr on the ATLAS-8k dataset using Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC) to preserve critical anatomical structures. We then fine-tune the model adversarially with Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) modules for precise control over pathology severity. By reformulating Tweedie's formula within a linear trajectory framework, ViCTr supports one-step sampling, reducing inference from 50 steps to just 4, without sacrificing anatomical realism. We evaluate ViCTr on BTCV (CT), AMOS (MRI), and CirrMRI600+ (cirrhosis) datasets. Results demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, achieving a Medical Frechet Inception Distance (MFID) of 17.01 for cirrhosis synthesis 28% lower than existing approaches and improving nnUNet segmentation by +3.8% mDSC when used for data augmentation. Radiologist reviews indicate that ViCTr-generated liver cirrhosis MRIs are clinically indistinguishable from real scans. To our knowledge, ViCTr is the first method to provide fine-grained, pathology-aware MRI synthesis with graded severity control, closing a critical gap in AI-driven medical imaging research.