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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Santos, Javier E., Marcato, Agnese, Colman, Roman, Lubbers, Nicholas, Lin, Yen Ting
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01917
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author Santos, Javier E.
Marcato, Agnese
Colman, Roman
Lubbers, Nicholas
Lin, Yen Ting
author_facet Santos, Javier E.
Marcato, Agnese
Colman, Roman
Lubbers, Nicholas
Lin, Yen Ting
contents Generative diffusion models have achieved remarkable success in producing high-quality images. However, these models typically operate in continuous intensity spaces, diffusing independently across pixels and color channels. As a result, they are fundamentally ill-suited for applications involving inherently discrete quantities-such as particle counts or material units-that are constrained by strict conservation laws like mass conservation, limiting their applicability in scientific workflows. To address this limitation, we propose Discrete Spatial Diffusion (DSD), a framework based on a continuous-time, discrete-state jump stochastic process that operates directly in discrete spatial domains while strictly preserving particle counts in both forward and reverse diffusion processes. By using spatial diffusion to achieve particle conservation, we introduce stochasticity naturally through a discrete formulation. We demonstrate the expressive flexibility of DSD by performing image synthesis, class conditioning, and image inpainting across standard image benchmarks, while exactly conditioning total image intensity. We validate DSD on two challenging scientific applications: porous rock microstructures and lithium-ion battery electrodes, demonstrating its ability to generate structurally realistic samples under strict mass conservation constraints, with quantitative evaluation using state-of-the-art metrics for transport and electrochemical performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01917
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discrete Spatial Diffusion: Intensity-Preserving Diffusion Modeling
Santos, Javier E.
Marcato, Agnese
Colman, Roman
Lubbers, Nicholas
Lin, Yen Ting
Graphics
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Image and Video Processing
Generative diffusion models have achieved remarkable success in producing high-quality images. However, these models typically operate in continuous intensity spaces, diffusing independently across pixels and color channels. As a result, they are fundamentally ill-suited for applications involving inherently discrete quantities-such as particle counts or material units-that are constrained by strict conservation laws like mass conservation, limiting their applicability in scientific workflows. To address this limitation, we propose Discrete Spatial Diffusion (DSD), a framework based on a continuous-time, discrete-state jump stochastic process that operates directly in discrete spatial domains while strictly preserving particle counts in both forward and reverse diffusion processes. By using spatial diffusion to achieve particle conservation, we introduce stochasticity naturally through a discrete formulation. We demonstrate the expressive flexibility of DSD by performing image synthesis, class conditioning, and image inpainting across standard image benchmarks, while exactly conditioning total image intensity. We validate DSD on two challenging scientific applications: porous rock microstructures and lithium-ion battery electrodes, demonstrating its ability to generate structurally realistic samples under strict mass conservation constraints, with quantitative evaluation using state-of-the-art metrics for transport and electrochemical performance.
title Discrete Spatial Diffusion: Intensity-Preserving Diffusion Modeling
topic Graphics
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01917