mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Rethinking Vector Field Learning for Generative Segmentation

arXiv 2603.19218 ↗First posted 19 Mar 2026cs.CVcited by 0

On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation

Abstract (arXiv)

Taming diffusion models for generative segmentation has attracted increasing attention. While existing approaches primarily focus on architectural tweaks or training heuristics, there remains a limited understanding of the intrinsic mismatch between continuous flow matching objectives and discrete perception tasks. In this work, we revisit diffusion segmentation from the perspective of vector field learning. We identify two key limitations of the commonly used flow matching objective: gradient vanishing and trajectory traversing, which result in slow convergence and poor class separation. To tackle these issues, we propose a principled vector field reshaping strategy that augments the learned velocity field with a detached distance-aware correction term. This correction introduces both attractive and repulsive interactions, enhancing gradient magnitudes near centroids while preserving the original diffusion training framework. Furthermore, we design a computationally efficient, quasi-random category encoding scheme inspired by Kronecker sequences, which integrates seamlessly with an end-to-end pixel neural field framework for pixel-level semantic alignment. Extensive experiments consistently demonstrate significant improvements over vanilla flow matching approaches, substantially narrowing the performance gap between generative segmentation and strong discriminative specialists.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 47 of its 50 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2026.

Builds on

47 of 50 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024SemFlow: Binding Semantic Segmentation and Image Synthesis via Rectified Flow30 May
  2. 2024Explore In-Context Segmentation via Latent Diffusion Models14 Mar
  3. 2024A Simple Latent Diffusion Approach for Panoptic Segmentation and Mask Inpainting18 Jan
  4. 2023SegRefiner: Towards Model-Agnostic Segmentation Refinement with Discrete Diffusion Process19 Dec
  5. 2023UniGS: Unified Representation for Image Generation and Segmentation4 Dec
  6. 2023SLiMe: Segment Like Me6 Sep
  7. 2021Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models6 Dec
  8. 2021SegDiff: Image Segmentation with Diffusion Probabilistic Models1 Dec

Other references · 39

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,604
  3. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,694
  4. 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,655
  5. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
  6. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  7. 2014Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentationcited by 4,845
  8. 2023SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,290
  9. 2024Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 4,094
  10. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
  11. 2016DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFscited by 3,239
  12. 2018Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentationcited by 3,210
27 more
  1. 2021SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformerscited by 2,923
  2. 2022InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructionscited by 2,591
  3. 2023Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasetscited by 2,526
  4. 2016Pyramid Scene Parsing Networkcited by 2,472
  5. 2021Masked-attention Mask Transformer for Universal Image Segmentationcited by 2,338
  6. 2021Per-Pixel Classification is Not All You Need for Semantic Segmentationcited by 1,148
  7. 2016COCO-Stuff: Thing and Stuff Classes in Contextcited by 858
  8. 2025Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIcited by 833
  9. 2024Representation Alignment for Generation: Training Diffusion Transformers Is Easier Than You Thinkcited by 666
  10. 2019Segmentation Transformer: Object-Contextual Representations for Semantic Segmentationcited by 573
  11. 2024LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusioncited by 549
  12. 2023InstaFlow: One Step is Enough for High-Quality Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Generationcited by 387
  13. 2022Rectified Flow: A Marginal Preserving Approach to Optimal Transportcited by 277
  14. 2023Unleashing Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Visual Perceptioncited by 266
  15. 2023InstructDiffusion: A Generalist Modeling Interface for Vision Taskscited by 162
  16. 2023DDP: Diffusion Model for Dense Visual Predictioncited by 148
  17. 2022GMMSeg: Gaussian Mixture based Generative Semantic Segmentation Modelscited by 87
  18. 2025PixNerd: Pixel Neural Field Diffusioncited by 75
  19. 2025PixelDiT: Pixel Diffusion Transformers for Image Generationcited by 75
  20. 2024What Matters When Repurposing Diffusion Models for General Dense Perception Tasks?cited by 74
  21. 2023Text-image Alignment for Diffusion-based Perceptioncited by 42
  22. 2023Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Generalizable Dense Predictioncited by 37
  23. 2024PixWizard: Versatile Image-to-Image Visual Assistant with Open-Language Instructionscited by 31
  24. 2025Symmetrical Flow Matching: Unified Image Generation, Segmentation, and Classification with Score-Based Generative Modelscited by 8
  25. 2025Jodi: Unification of Visual Generation and Understanding via Joint Modelingcited by 5
  26. 2024Toward a Diffusion-Based Generalist for Dense Vision Taskscited by 3
  27. 2025VRMDiff: Text-Guided Video Referring Matting Generation of Diffusioncited by 2

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  1. 2025G4Seg: Generation for Inexact Segmentation Refinement with Diffusion Models
  2. 2026Making Training-Free Diffusion Segmentors Scale with the Generative Power
  3. 2023Flow Matching in Latent Space
  4. 2026From Diffusion to Rectified Flow: Rethinking Text-Based Segmentation
  5. 2026Differential Vector Erasure: Unified Training-Free Concept Erasure for Flow Matching Models
  6. 2023Diffusion Model is Secretly a Training-free Open Vocabulary Semantic Segmenter
  7. 2025Flow Matching in the Low-Noise Regime: Pathologies and a Contrastive Remedy
  8. 2023Dataset Diffusion: Diffusion-based Synthetic Dataset Generation for Pixel-Level Semantic Segmentation