# Back to Physics: Operator-Guided Generative Paths for SMS MRI Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07820 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07820/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2026.

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [fastMRI: An Open Dataset and Benchmarks for Accelerated MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08839/) (2018)
- [MoDL: Model Based Deep Learning Architecture for Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.02862/) (2017)
- [Learning a Variational Network for Reconstruction of Accelerated MRI Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00447/) (2017)
- [Score-based diffusion models for accelerated MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05243/) (2021)
- [Cold Diffusion: Inverting Arbitrary Image Transforms Without Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09392/) (2022)
- [A Deep Cascade of Convolutional Neural Networks for Dynamic MR Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02422/) (2017)
- [End-to-End Variational Networks for Accelerated MRI Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06688/) (2020)
- [Adaptive Diffusion Priors for Accelerated MRI Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05876/) (2022)
- [Robust Simultaneous Multislice MRI Reconstruction Using Slice-Wise Learned Generative Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21600/) (2024)
- [Holistic Multi-Slice Framework for Dynamic Simultaneous Multi-Slice MRI Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01355/) (2023)
- [K-space Diffusion Model Based MR Reconstruction Method for Simultaneous Multislice Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03293/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) imaging with in-plane undersampling enables highly accelerated MRI but yields a strongly coupled inverse problem with deterministic inter-slice interference and missing k-space data. Most diffusion-based reconstructions are formulated around Gaussian-noise corruption and rely on additional consistency steps to incorporate SMS physics, which can be mismatched to the operator-governed degradations in SMS acquisition. We propose an operator-guided framework that models the degradation trajectory using known acquisition operators and inverts this process via deterministic updates. Within this framework, we introduce an operator-conditional dual-stream interaction network (OCDI-Net) that explicitly disentangles target-slice content from inter-slice interference and predicts structured degradations for operator-aligned inversion, and we instantiate reconstruction as a two-stage chained inference procedure that performs SMS slice separation followed by in-plane completion. Experiments on fastMRI brain data and prospectively acquired in vivo diffusion MRI data demonstrate improved fidelity and reduced slice leakage over conventional and learning-based SMS reconstructions.