# FAD-Net: Frequency-Domain Attention-Guided Diffusion Network for Coronary Artery Segmentation using Invasive Coronary Angiography

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11454 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11454/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 17 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jun 2025.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0473/) (2014)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Non-local Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07971/) (2017)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [Dynamic Snake Convolution based on Topological Geometric Constraints for Tubular Structure Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08388/) (2023)
- [Modality-agnostic Domain Generalizable Medical Image Segmentation by Multi-Frequency in Multi-Scale Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06284/) (2024)
- [SCSA: Exploring the Synergistic Effects Between Spatial and Channel Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05128/) (2024)
- [3D Fusion between Fluoroscopy Angiograms and SPECT Myocardial Perfusion Images to Guide Percutaneous Coronary Intervention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06906/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) remains one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Precise segmentation of coronary arteries from invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is critical for effective clinical decision-making. Objective: This study aims to propose a novel deep learning model based on frequency-domain analysis to enhance the accuracy of coronary artery segmentation and stenosis detection in ICA, thereby offering robust support for the stenosis detection and treatment of CAD. Methods: We propose the Frequency-Domain Attention-Guided Diffusion Network (FAD-Net), which integrates a frequency-domain-based attention mechanism and a cascading diffusion strategy to fully exploit frequency-domain information for improved segmentation accuracy. Specifically, FAD-Net employs a Multi-Level Self-Attention (MLSA) mechanism in the frequency domain, computing the similarity between queries and keys across high- and low-frequency components in ICAs. Furthermore, a Low-Frequency Diffusion Module (LFDM) is incorporated to decompose ICAs into low- and high-frequency components via multi-level wavelet transformation. Subsequently, it refines fine-grained arterial branches and edges by reintegrating high-frequency details via inverse fusion, enabling continuous enhancement of anatomical precision. Results and Conclusions: Extensive experiments demonstrate that FAD-Net achieves a mean Dice coefficient of 0.8717 in coronary artery segmentation, outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods. In addition, it attains a true positive rate of 0.6140 and a positive predictive value of 0.6398 in stenosis detection, underscoring its clinical applicability. These findings suggest that FAD-Net holds significant potential to assist in the accurate diagnosis and treatment planning of CAD.