mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Lesion-DDPM: Lesion-Enhanced 3D Diffusion for MS MRI Synthesis

arXiv 2606.15457 ↗First posted 13 Jun 2026cs.CV cs.LGcited by 0

On the map: Diffusion models → Medical imaging and segmentation

Abstract (arXiv)

3D FLAIR MRI is widely recommended as one of the standard MRI sequences for brain imaging in multiple sclerosis (MS), but publicly available MS datasets remain relatively small and vary across scanners, acquisition protocols, and lesion patterns. This scarcity and variability hinder the development of robust neuroimaging machine learning models and are particularly challenging for generative models that aim to synthesize images while preserving small, sparse lesions. We propose Lesion-DDPM, a 3D conditional diffusion framework for lesion-aware FLAIR synthesis that incorporates multi-level anatomical mask injection together with a lesion-weighted reconstruction loss to emphasize lesion voxels while maintaining global brain structure. Using a curated subset of the MSLesSeg dataset, we compare Lesion-DDPM with representative state-of-the-art GAN- and diffusion-based models, assessing both image-generation metrics and downstream 3D U-Net segmentation. In our experiments, Lesion-DDPM achieved the lowest lesion-region reconstruction error among all methods. In a downstream 3D U-Net lesion segmentation task, a model trained only on Lesion-DDPM-generated scans and evaluated on real MRIs reached a Dice score of 0.616 compared with 0.569 for the best competing synthetic dataset. When Lesion-DDPM images were added to the real training set, the Dice score further increased to 0.685.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 17 of its 26 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Jun 2026.

Builds on

17 of 26 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Conditional Diffusion Models for Semantic 3D Brain MRI Synthesis29 May
  2. 2022Diffusion Models for Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey14 Nov
  3. 2022Brain Imaging Generation with Latent Diffusion Models15 Sep
  4. 2022Diffusion Models for Medical Anomaly Detection8 Mar

Other references · 13

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  2. 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
  3. 2021Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesiscited by 8,255
  4. 2016Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networkscited by 4,527
  5. 2021Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 3,761
  6. 20163D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotationcited by 1,476
  7. 2017Generalised Dice overlap as a deep learning loss function for highly unbalanced segmentationscited by 620
  8. 2017Learning to Discover Cross-Domain Relations with Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 278
  9. 2024DiffuseMix: Label-Preserving Data Augmentation with Diffusion Modelscited by 78
  10. 2019Generation of 3D Brain MRI Using Auto-Encoding Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 65
  11. 2020Hierarchical Amortized Training for Memory-efficient High Resolution 3D GANcited by 60
  12. 2022A Survey on Training Challenges in Generative Adversarial Networks for Biomedical Image Analysiscited by 24
1 more
  1. 2022Longitudinal detection of new MS lesions using Deep Learningcited by 4

Built on by

Not cited yet.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Bi-Directional MS Lesion Filling and Synthesis Using Denoising Diffusion Implicit Model-based Lesion Repainting
  2. 2025MSRepaint: Multiple Sclerosis Repaint with Conditional Denoising Diffusion Implicit Model for Bidirectional Lesion Filling and Synthesis
  3. 2025Spatio-Temporal Conditional Diffusion Models for Forecasting Future Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Masks Conditioned on Treatments
  4. 2025Lesion-Aware Post-Training of Latent Diffusion Models for Synthesizing Diffusion MRI from CT Perfusion
  5. 2026VS-DDPM: Efficient Low-Cost Diffusion Model for Medical Modality Translation
  6. 2025DEMIST: Decoupled Multi-stream latent diffusion for Quantitative Myelin Map Synthesis
  7. 2026Structural MRI Synthesis for Alzheimer's Disease via Conditional Diffusion on Anatomical Masks
  8. 2024LeFusion: Controllable Pathology Synthesis via Lesion-Focused Diffusion Models