# Toward a Foundation Plug-and-Play Prior for Computed Tomography Reconstruction via a Multimodal Diffusion Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23190 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.23190/

## 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 28 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Aug 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)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Solving Inverse Problems in Medical Imaging with Score-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08005/) (2021)
- [Plug-and-Play Image Restoration with Deep Denoiser Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13751/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Models for Plug-and-Play Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.08995/) (2023)
- [Plug-and-Play ADMM for Image Restoration: Fixed Point Convergence and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.01710/) (2016)
- [Diffusion models as plug-and-play priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09012/) (2022)
- [Plug-and-Play Methods Provably Converge with Properly Trained Denoisers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05406/) (2019)
- [Solving 3D Inverse Problems using Pre-trained 2D Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10655/) (2022)
- [Principled Probabilistic Imaging using Diffusion Models as Plug-and-Play Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18782/) (2024)
- [Plug-and-Play Methods for Integrating Physical and Learned Models in Computational Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17061/) (2022)
- [InverseBench: Benchmarking Plug-and-Play Diffusion Priors for Inverse Problems in Physical Sciences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11043/) (2025)
- [Deep Diffusion Image Prior for Efficient OOD Adaptation in 3D Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10641/) (2024)
- [Steerable Conditional Diffusion for Out-of-Distribution Adaptation in Medical Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14409/) (2023)
- [Differentiable Forward Projector for X-ray Computed Tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05801/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Prior Regularized Iterative Reconstruction for Low-dose CT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06949/) (2023)
- [Plug-and-Play Priors as a Score-Based Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11108/) (2024)
- [Tomographic Foundation Model -- FORCE: Flow-Oriented Reconstruction Conditioning Engine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02149/) (2025)
- [Cross-Modal Guidance for Fast Diffusion-Based Computed Tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01253/) (2026)
- [YOLO2U-Net: Detection-Guided 3D Instance Segmentation for Microscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06215/) (2022)
- [Plug-and-Play with 2.5D Artifact Reduction Prior for Fast and Accurate Industrial Computed Tomography Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14719/) (2025)
- [Towards reconstructing experimental sparse-view X-ray CT data with diffusion models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12755/) (2026)
- [Regularizing INR with diffusion prior self-supervised 3D reconstruction of neutron computed tomography data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10947/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Computed tomography (CT) throughput is limited by scan time, which grows with both the number of projections acquired and the detector integration time for each projection. Reconstructing high-quality volumes from sparse-view or low-dose measurements therefore depends on using an informative prior, typically a neural network trained for one specific scan setting and retrained whenever the modality, geometry, or material changes. We investigate whether a single diffusion model trained across several imaging domains can instead serve as a reusable prior for heterogeneous CT reconstruction problems. We evaluate the proposed method using the same diffusion visual transformer model and normalized denoising strength on three datasets that differ in modality, beam geometry, material, and degradation type, spanning additively manufactured metal parts and concrete microstructure imaged with cone-bean X-ray CT and parallel-beam neutron CT respectively. The proposed method improves upon analytic reconstructions in all three cases, demonstrating transferability across the evaluated problems and providing a step toward a reusable foundation prior for heterogeneous CT reconstruction.