CardiacFlow: 3D+t Four-Chamber Cardiac Shape Completion and Generation via Flow Matching
On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation
Abstract (arXiv)
Learning 3D+t shape completion and generation from multi-view cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) images requires a large amount of high-resolution 3D whole-heart segmentations (WHS) to capture shape priors. In this work, we leverage flow matching techniques to learn deep generative flows for augmentation, completion, and generation of 3D+t shapes of four cardiac chambers represented implicitly by segmentations. Firstly, we introduce a latent rectified flow to generate 3D cardiac shapes for data augmentation, learnt from a limited number of 3D WHS data. Then, a label completion network is trained on both real and synthetic data to reconstruct 3D+t shapes from sparse multi-view CMR segmentations. Lastly, we propose CardiacFlow, a novel one-step generative flow model for efficient 3D+t four-chamber cardiac shape generation, conditioned on the periodic Gaussian kernel encoding of time frames. The experiments on the WHS datasets demonstrate that flow-based data augmentation reduces geometric errors by 16% in 3D shape completion. The evaluation on the UK Biobank dataset validates that CardiacFlow achieves superior generation quality and periodic consistency compared to existing baselines.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 19 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Sep 2025.
Builds on
19 of 40 references.
References · 19
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
- 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
- 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 6,013
- 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,702
- 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,181
- 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,700
- 2022Swin UNETR: Swin Transformers for Semantic Segmentation of Brain Tumors in MRI Imagescited by 830
- 2023Patch Diffusion: Faster and More Data-Efficient Training of Diffusion Modelscited by 133
- 2024Improving the Training of Rectified Flowscited by 108
- 2019Evaluation of Algorithms for Multi-Modality Whole Heart Segmentation: An Open-Access Grand Challengecited by 100
7 more
- 2024Beta Sampling is All You Need: Efficient Image Generation Strategy for Diffusion Models using Stepwise Spectral Analysiscited by 19
- 2023SDF4CHD: Generative Modeling of Cardiac Anatomies with Congenital Heart Defectscited by 17
- 2023DeepMesh: Mesh-based Cardiac Motion Tracking using Deep Learningcited by 14
- 2023CHeart: A Conditional Spatio-Temporal Generative Model for Cardiac Anatomycited by 13
- 2024Improved 3D Whole Heart Geometry from Sparse CMR Slicescited by 8
- 2024Spatio-temporal neural distance fields for conditional generative modeling of the heartcited by 7
- 2023High-Resolution Maps of Left Atrial Displacements and Strains Estimated with 3D Cine MRI using Online Learning Neural Networkscited by 1
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026VecHeart: Holistic Four-Chamber Cardiac Anatomy Modeling via Hybrid VecSetscited by 1
- 2026Personalized 4D Whole-Heart Mesh Reconstruction from Cine MRI via Multi-Scale Temporal Modeling and Differentiable Contour Renderingcited by 1
- 2026Chain of Flow: ECG-Conditioned 4D Cardiac Cine Generation from Patient-Specific Anatomical Anchorcited by 0
- 2026Flow Matching-enabled Test-Time Refinement for Unsupervised Cardiac MR Registrationcited by 0
- 2026Conditional Latent Diffusion Model with Fourier-based Motion Modelling for Virtual Population Synthesiscited by 0
- 2026A Strong Linear Baseline for Whole-Heart Cardiac Shape Completion on CT, with an Open Eleven-Structure Statistical Shape Modelcited by 0
- 2026Latent-to-Latent Flow for Volumetric Stochastic Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026Anatomy-Aligned Surface Field Learning for Myocardial Reconstruction from Sparse Short-Axis Cine MRIcited by 0
- 2026Focus, Align, and Diffuse: Time-Series-Aware Keyframe Diffusion for Cardiac Dynamic Synthesis from Sparse Observationscited by 0
- 2026Focus, Align, and Diffuse: Time-Series-Aware Keyframe Diffusion for Cardiac Dynamic Synthesis from Sparse Observations13 Oct 2026
- 2026Anatomy-Aligned Surface Field Learning for Myocardial Reconstruction from Sparse Short-Axis Cine MRI24 Sep 2026
- 2026Latent-to-Latent Flow for Volumetric Stochastic Segmentation7 Sep 2026
- 2026A Strong Linear Baseline for Whole-Heart Cardiac Shape Completion on CT, with an Open Eleven-Structure Statistical Shape Model20 Aug 2026
- 2026Personalized 4D Whole-Heart Mesh Reconstruction from Cine MRI via Multi-Scale Temporal Modeling and Differentiable Contour Rendering2 Jul 2026
- 2026Conditional Latent Diffusion Model with Fourier-based Motion Modelling for Virtual Population Synthesis2 Jun 2026
- 2026VecHeart: Holistic Four-Chamber Cardiac Anatomy Modeling via Hybrid VecSets21 Apr 2026
- 2026Flow Matching-enabled Test-Time Refinement for Unsupervised Cardiac MR Registration1 Mar 2026
- 2026Chain of Flow: ECG-Conditioned 4D Cardiac Cine Generation from Patient-Specific Anatomical Anchor26 Feb 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Cardiac Mesh Flow: One-Step Generation of 3D+t Cardiac Four-Chamber Meshes via Flow Matching
- 2026Echo4DIR: 4D Implicit Heart Reconstruction from 2D Echocardiography Videos
- 2026One Frame, Full Heartbeat: ECG-Free 4D Cardiac Cine MRI Synthesis via Radial-Decomposed Flow Matching
- 2023DMCVR: Morphology-Guided Diffusion Model for 3D Cardiac Volume Reconstruction
- 2026CardioDiT: Latent Diffusion Transformers for 4D Cardiac MRI Synthesis
- 2026Flow Matching Meets 3D Curvilinear Structure Segmentation in Medical Imaging
- 2024Graph Convolutional Neural Networks for Automated Echocardiography View Recognition: A Holistic Approach
- 2026Anatomy-Guided Residual Motion Diffusion for Controllable 4D Cardiac MRI Synthesis