# CAGE: Bridging the Accuracy-Aesthetics Gap in Educational Diagrams via Code-Anchored Generative Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09691 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09691/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 11 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Image generation, text-to-image and editing](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/image-generation-text-to-image-and-editing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10244/) (2022)
- [FastSpeech 2: Fast and High-Quality End-to-End Text to Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04558/) (2020)
- [PlotQA: Reasoning over Scientific Plots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00997/) (2019)
- [FigureQA: An Annotated Figure Dataset for Visual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07300/) (2017)
- [TextDiffuser: Diffusion Models as Text Painters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10855/) (2023)
- [PPTAgent: Generating and Evaluating Presentations Beyond Text-to-Slides](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03936/) (2025)
- [NL4DV: A Toolkit for Generating Analytic Specifications for Data Visualization from Natural Language Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10723/) (2020)
- [SciGraphQA: A Large-Scale Synthetic Multi-Turn Question-Answering Dataset for Scientific Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03349/) (2023)
- [D2S: Document-to-Slide Generation Via Query-Based Text Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03664/) (2021)

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

- [Crafter: A Multi-Agent Harness for Editable Scientific Figure Generation from Diverse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30611/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Educational diagrams -- labeled illustrations of biological processes, chemical structures, physical systems, and mathematical concepts -- are essential cognitive tools in K-12 instruction. Yet no existing method can generate them both accurately and engagingly. Open-source diffusion models produce visually rich images but catastrophically garble text labels. Code-based generation via LLMs guarantees label correctness but yields visually flat outputs. Closed-source APIs partially bridge this gap but remain unreliable and prohibitively expensive at educational scale. We quantify this accuracy-aesthetics dilemma across all three paradigms on 400 K-12 diagram prompts, measuring both label fidelity and visual quality through complementary automated and human evaluation protocols. To resolve it, we propose CAGE (Code-Anchored Generative Enhancement): an LLM synthesizes executable code producing a structurally correct diagram, then a diffusion model conditioned on the programmatic output via ControlNet refines it into a visually polished graphic while preserving label fidelity. We also introduce EduDiagram-2K, a collection of 2,000 paired programmatic-stylized diagrams enabling this pipeline, and present proof-of-concept results and a research agenda for the multimedia community.