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Machine learning

Synthetic chest X-ray images from text prompts

A latent diffusion model pre-trained on pairs of natural images and text descriptors can be adapted to generate realistic chest radiographs that are controlled by free-form medical text prompts.

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Fig. 1: Interacting with an image generative model in plain language.

References

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Correspondence to Daniel Truhn.

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Competing interests

J.N.K. declares consulting services for Bioptimus, France; Owkin, France; DoMore Diagnostics, Norway; Panakeia, UK; AstraZeneca, UK; Scailyte, Switzerland; Mindpeak, Germany; and MultiplexDx, Slovakia. Furthermore, J.N.K. holds shares in StratifAI GmbH and Synagen GmbH, Germany, has received a research grant by GSK, and has received honoraria by AstraZeneca, Bayer, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, Janssen, MSD, BMS, Roche, Pfizer and Fresenius. D.T. declares honoraria by Bayer and GE, and holds shares in StratifAI GmbH and Synagen GmbH, Germany.

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Truhn, D., Kather, J.N. Synthetic chest X-ray images from text prompts. Nat. Biomed. Eng 9, 439–440 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-024-01261-z

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