# Inpainting is All You Need: A Diffusion-based Augmentation Method for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23038 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23038/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 49 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [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)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [RePaint: Inpainting using Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09865/) (2022)
- [Palette: Image-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05826/) (2021)
- [UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10504/) (2021)
- [Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13188/) (2023)
- [Skin Lesion Analysis Toward Melanoma Detection 2018: A Challenge Hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03368/) (2019)
- [The Medical Segmentation Decathlon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05735/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Art or Digital Forgery? Investigating Data Replication in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03860/) (2022)
- [Uncertainty-aware Self-ensembling Model for Semi-supervised 3D Left Atrium Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07034/) (2019)
- [Is synthetic data from generative models ready for image recognition?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07574/) (2022)
- [Contrastive learning of global and local features for medical image segmentation with limited annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10511/) (2020)
- [Effective Data Augmentation With Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07944/) (2023)
- [Brain Imaging Generation with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07162/) (2022)
- [DatasetGAN: Efficient Labeled Data Factory with Minimal Human Effort](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06490/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Medical Image Translation with Adversarial Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08208/) (2022)
- [Revisiting Weak-to-Strong Consistency in Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09910/) (2022)
- [DiffuMask: Synthesizing Images with Pixel-level Annotations for Semantic Segmentation Using Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11681/) (2023)
- [Medical Image Synthesis for Data Augmentation and Anonymization using Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10225/) (2018)
- [Semantic Segmentation with Generative Models: Semi-Supervised Learning and Strong Out-of-Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05833/) (2021)
- [Data augmentation using learned transformations for one-shot medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09383/) (2019)
- [Bidirectional Copy-Paste for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00673/) (2023)

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

- [Domain shift-robust object detection with GenAI image editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02299/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Collecting pixel-level labels for medical datasets can be a laborious and expensive process, and enhancing segmentation performance with a scarcity of labeled data is a crucial challenge. This work introduces AugPaint, a data augmentation framework that utilizes inpainting to generate image-label pairs from limited labeled data. AugPaint leverages latent diffusion models, known for their ability to generate high-quality in-domain images with low overhead, and adapts the sampling process for the inpainting task without need for retraining. Specifically, given a pair of image and label mask, we crop the area labeled with the foreground and condition on it during reversed denoising process for every noise level. Masked background area would gradually be filled in, and all generated images are paired with the label mask. This approach ensures the accuracy of match between synthetic images and label masks, setting it apart from existing dataset generation methods. The generated images serve as valuable supervision for training downstream segmentation models, effectively addressing the challenge of limited annotations. We conducted extensive evaluations of our data augmentation method on four public medical image segmentation datasets, including CT, MRI, and skin imaging. Results across all datasets demonstrate that AugPaint outperforms state-of-the-art label-efficient methodologies, significantly improving segmentation performance.