1 Introduction  
1.1 Motivation and uniqueness of this survey  
1.2 Search strategy  

2 General Overview of DMs  
2.1 DDPMs  
2.2 NCSNs  
2.3 SDEs  

3 General Applications of DMs  

4 Innovations and Experimental Techniques in DMs  

5 Media Quality, Authenticity, and Synthesis  

6 Image Transformation and Enhancement  

7 Healthcare and Medical Applications  

8 Applications of Diffusion Models in Other Fields  

9 Discussion  

10 Conclusion