Diffusion Autoencoder for Unsupervised Artifact Restoration in Handheld Fundus Images

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Palani, Mathumetha, Puthumana, Kavya, Das, Ayantika, Krishnamurthi, Ganapathy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Palani, Mathumetha
Puthumana, Kavya
Das, Ayantika
Krishnamurthi, Ganapathy
author_facet Palani, Mathumetha
Puthumana, Kavya
Das, Ayantika
Krishnamurthi, Ganapathy
contents The advent of handheld fundus imaging devices has made ophthalmologic diagnosis and disease screening more accessible, efficient, and cost-effective. However, images captured from these setups often suffer from artifacts such as flash reflections, exposure variations, and motion-induced blur, which degrade image quality and hinder downstream analysis. While generative models have been effective in image restoration, most depend on paired supervision or predefined artifact structures, making them less adaptable to unstructured degradations commonly observed in handheld fundus images. To address this, we propose an unsupervised diffusion autoencoder that integrates a context encoder with the denoising process to learn semantically meaningful representations for artifact restoration. The model is trained only on high-quality table-top fundus images and infers to restore artifact-affected handheld acquisitions. We validate the restorations through quantitative and qualitative evaluations, and have shown that diagnostic accuracy increases to 81.17% on an unseen dataset and multiple artifact conditions
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_15723
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Diffusion Autoencoder for Unsupervised Artifact Restoration in Handheld Fundus Images
Palani, Mathumetha
Puthumana, Kavya
Das, Ayantika
Krishnamurthi, Ganapathy
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
The advent of handheld fundus imaging devices has made ophthalmologic diagnosis and disease screening more accessible, efficient, and cost-effective. However, images captured from these setups often suffer from artifacts such as flash reflections, exposure variations, and motion-induced blur, which degrade image quality and hinder downstream analysis. While generative models have been effective in image restoration, most depend on paired supervision or predefined artifact structures, making them less adaptable to unstructured degradations commonly observed in handheld fundus images. To address this, we propose an unsupervised diffusion autoencoder that integrates a context encoder with the denoising process to learn semantically meaningful representations for artifact restoration. The model is trained only on high-quality table-top fundus images and infers to restore artifact-affected handheld acquisitions. We validate the restorations through quantitative and qualitative evaluations, and have shown that diagnostic accuracy increases to 81.17% on an unseen dataset and multiple artifact conditions
title Diffusion Autoencoder for Unsupervised Artifact Restoration in Handheld Fundus Images
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15723