Semantically Consistent Discrete Diffusion for 3D Biological Graph Modeling
On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation
Abstract (arXiv)
3D spatial graphs play a crucial role in biological and clinical research by modeling anatomical networks such as blood vessels,neurons, and airways. However, generating 3D biological graphs while maintaining anatomical validity remains challenging, a key limitation of existing diffusion-based methods. In this work, we propose a novel 3D biological graph generation method that adheres to structural and semantic plausibility conditions. We achieve this by using a novel projection operator during sampling that stochastically fixes inconsistencies. Further, we adopt a superior edge-deletion-based noising procedure suitable for sparse biological graphs. Our method demonstrates superior performance on two real-world datasets, human circle of Willis and lung airways, compared to previous approaches. Importantly, we demonstrate that the generated samples significantly enhance downstream graph labeling performance. Furthermore, we show that our generative model is a reasonable out-of-the-box link predictior.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 14 of its 27 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Jul 2025.
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- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
- 2021Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spacescited by 1,719
- 2023Discrete Diffusion Modeling by Estimating the Ratios of the Data Distributioncited by 745
- 2022DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generationcited by 520
- 2023Protein Design with Guided Discrete Diffusioncited by 157
- 2023MiDi: Mixed Graph and 3D Denoising Diffusion for Molecule Generationcited by 98
- 2023The TopCoW Challenge -- Topology-Aware Circle of Willis Segmentation for CT and MR Angiographycited by 50
- 2024Generative Modelling of Structurally Constrained Graphscited by 19
- 2024vesselFM: A Foundation Model for Universal 3D Blood Vessel Segmentationcited by 18
- 2021Scalable Robust Graph and Feature Extraction for Arbitrary Vessel Networks in Large Volumetric Datasetscited by 17
- 2023VesselVAE: Recursive Variational Autoencoders for 3D Blood Vessel Synthesiscited by 13
- 2024MorphGrower: A Synchronized Layer-by-layer Growing Approach for Plausible Neuronal Morphology Generationcited by 2
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
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- 2025StructDiff: Structure-aware Diffusion Model for 3D Fine-grained Medical Image Synthesis
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