# High-Fidelity Medical Shape Generation via Skeletal Latent Diffusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07504 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07504/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 28 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Medical imaging and segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/medical-imaging-and-segmentation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Diffusion Probabilistic Models for 3D Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01458/) (2021)
- [PCT: Point cloud transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09688/) (2020)
- [LION: Latent Point Diffusion Models for 3D Shape Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06978/) (2022)
- [3D Shape Generation and Completion through Point-Voxel Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03670/) (2021)
- [PointFlow: 3D Point Cloud Generation with Continuous Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.12320/) (2019)
- [3DShape2VecSet: A 3D Shape Representation for Neural Fields and Generative Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11445/) (2023)
- [SDFusion: Multimodal 3D Shape Completion, Reconstruction, and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04493/) (2022)
- [ImageCAS: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Coronary Artery Segmentation based on Computed Tomography Angiography Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01607/) (2022)
- [Point2Skeleton: Learning Skeletal Representations from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00230/) (2020)
- [MedShapeNet -- A Large-Scale Dataset of 3D Medical Shapes for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16139/) (2023)
- [Neural Wavelet-domain Diffusion for 3D Shape Generation, Inversion, and Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00190/) (2023)
- [LaGeM: A Large Geometry Model for 3D Representation Learning and Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01295/) (2024)
- [Computing Medial Axis Transform with Feature Preservation via Restricted Power Diagram](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13676/) (2022)
- [GEM3D: GEnerative Medial Abstractions for 3D Shape Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16994/) (2024)
- [3D Vessel Graph Generation Using Denoising Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05842/) (2024)
- [TrIND: Representing Anatomical Trees by Denoising Diffusion of Implicit Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08974/) (2024)
- [Hierarchical Part-based Generative Model for Realistic 3D Blood Vessel](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15223/) (2025)
- [Flemme: A Flexible and Modular Learning Platform for Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09369/) (2024)
- [Hierarchical Feature Learning for Medical Point Clouds via State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13015/) (2025)

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

- [GenMed: A Pairwise Generative Reformulation of Medical Diagnostic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10645/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Anatomy shape modeling is a fundamental problem in medical data analysis. However, the geometric complexity and topological variability of anatomical structures pose significant challenges to accurate anatomical shape generation. In this work, we propose a skeletal latent diffusion framework that explicitly incorporates structural priors for efficient and high-fidelity medical shape generation. We introduce a shape auto-encoder in which the encoder captures global geometric information through a differentiable skeletonization module and aggregates local surface features into shape latents, while the decoder predicts the corresponding implicit fields over sparsely sampled coordinates. New shapes are generated via a latent-space diffusion model, followed by neural implicit decoding and mesh extraction. To address the limited availability of medical shape data, we construct a large-scale dataset, textitMedSDF, comprising surface point clouds and corresponding signed distance fields across multiple anatomical categories. Extensive experiments on MedSDF and vessel datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior reconstruction and generation quality while maintaining a higher computational efficiency compared with existing approaches. Code is available at: https://github.com/wlsdzyzl/meshage.