NullFlow: One-Step Generative Reconstruction
Xiao Shi, Edward P. Chandler, Chicago Y. Park, Shirin Shoushtari, Ulugbek S. Kamilov
Abstract
We propose NullFlow, a principled framework for one-step generative image reconstruction. Our key idea is to confine the generative flow to a measurement-consistent subspace. Because the flow never leaves this subspace, NullFlow needs no separate data-fidelity corrections, unlike existing solvers. NullFlow samples in a single network evaluation by learning the flow's average velocity, avoiding the step-by-step integration of traditional flow matching methods. We prove that the average velocity of this constrained flow yields a training objective whose global minimizer is a one-step posterior sampler. We show on image inpainting that NullFlow matches state-of-the-art diffusion solvers while cutting inference from hundreds of network evaluations to one.
Topics
Classified with taxonomy v2 on Sat, 5 Sept 2026.