# Progressive Flow-inspired Unfolding for Spectral Compressive Imaging

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12079 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12079/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Improving Diffusion Models for Inverse Problems using Manifold Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00941/) (2022)
- [Inversion by Direct Iteration: An Alternative to Denoising Diffusion for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11435/) (2023)
- [Mask-guided Spectral-wise Transformer for Efficient Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07910/) (2021)
- [Gradient Step Denoiser for convergent Plug-and-Play](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03220/) (2021)
- [Rank Minimization for Snapshot Compressive Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.07837/) (2018)
- [Coarse-to-Fine Sparse Transformer for Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04845/) (2022)
- [HDNet: High-resolution Dual-domain Learning for Spectral Compressive Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02149/) (2022)
- [Degradation-Aware Unfolding Half-Shuffle Transformer for Spectral Compressive Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10102/) (2022)
- [Direct Diffusion Bridge using Data Consistency for Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19809/) (2023)
- [Image Restoration by Denoising Diffusion Models with Iteratively Preconditioned Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16519/) (2023)
- [Residual Degradation Learning Unfolding Framework with Mixing Priors across Spectral and Spatial for Compressive Spectral Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.06891/) (2022)
- [Pixel Adaptive Deep Unfolding Transformer for Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10820/) (2023)
- [Detail Matters: Mamba-Inspired Joint Unfolding Network for Snapshot Spectral Compressive Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01262/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Coded aperture snapshot spectral imaging (CASSI) retrieves a 3D hyperspectral image (HSI) from a single 2D compressed measurement, which is a highly challenging reconstruction task. Recent deep unfolding networks (DUNs), empowered by explicit data-fidelity updates and implicit deep denoisers, have achieved the state of the art in CASSI reconstruction. However, existing unfolding approaches suffer from uncontrollable reconstruction trajectories, leading to abrupt quality jumps and non-gradual refinement across stages. Inspired by diffusion trajectories and flow matching, we propose a novel trajectory-controllable unfolding framework that enforces smooth, continuous optimization paths from noisy initial estimates to high-quality reconstructions. To achieve computational efficiency, we design an efficient spatial-spectral Transformer tailored for hyperspectral reconstruction, along with a frequency-domain fusion module to gurantee feature consistency. Experiments on simulation and real data demonstrate that our method achieves better reconstruction quality and efficiency than prior state-of-the-art approaches.