Medical Image Localization

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Overview

Medical image localization studies how to identify where anatomical landmarks, lesions, organs, and devices appear in 2D and 3D scans or clinical videos, supporting diagnosis, measurement, and image-guided procedures. Common approaches include heatmap and coordinate regression, object detection and segmentation, anatomical priors, weakly or self-supervised learning, temporal tracking, registration, and vision-language grounding. Methods are evaluated across X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, pathology, and endoscopy using landmark error, detection and overlap scores, and tests on external sites; some also guide robotic scanning or surgery. A central challenge is that strong average results can mask failures on small or rare targets, across modalities or hospitals, and under strict 3D alignment, while reliable uncertainty and clinical integration remain open problems.

Latest papers

CardsList

104 papers11 papers in the last four weeks, up 10% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Uncertainty-aware Coarse-to-Fine Main Pancreatic Duct Segmentation for Width Measurement in 3D MRCP

    Oct 29, 2026Zipei Zhang, Jaakko Sahlsten, Mikko Saukkoriipi +5Medical Image Segmentation3D Medical Image Segmentation

    Department of Computer Science, Aalto University School of Science, Finland · Department of Radiology, Tampere University Hospital, Wellbeing Services County of Pirkanmaa, Finland · Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Finland

  2. Beyond Region Memory: Local Point Tracking for Vocal Cord Localization in Video Laryngoscopy

    Oct 28, 2026Huayu Wang, Gyungmin Ko, Jung Heon Kim +9Medical Image LocalizationVideo Object Detection

    University of Washington · Ajou University · National Cheng Kung University +3

  3. From Presence Labels to Bounding Boxes: Can Multimodal Large Language Models Scale Surgical Instrument Localization?

    Oct 25, 2026Mohamed Hamdy, Muraam Abdel-Ghani, Fatmaelzahraa Ahmed +5LLM-Assisted AnnotationMedical Image Localization

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar · Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar · College of Medicine, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

  4. Reinforcing intra-operative tumour localisation with weak supervision from pre-operative appearances

    Oct 22, 2026Sidhart Sami, Ali Sharjeel, Sri Atluri +4Medical Image LocalizationCross-Domain Transfer Learning

    Centre for Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom · National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (FAST-NUCES), Karachi, Pakistan · Digital Environment Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom +1

  5. An Anatomy-Aware Staged Pipeline for Vessel-Specific Intracranial Aneurysm Segmentation in CT and MR Angiography

    Oct 15, 2026Gniewosz Drwiega, Wojciech Szymanski, Marek WodzinskiMedical Image SegmentationInstance Segmentation

    Sano – Centre for Computational Personalised Medicine, International Research Foundation, Kraków, Poland · AGH University of Krakow, Kraków, Poland

  6. PathPilot: An Adaptive Question-Conditioned Multi-Magnification Navigation Agent for Whole-Slide Image Analysis

    Oct 12, 2026Zhengyang Xu, Han Li, Jingsong Liu +5Whole-Slide Image AnalysisComputational Pathology

    Institute of Pathology, Technical University of Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning, Munich, Germany · Chair of Computer Aided Medical Procedures, Technical University of Munich, Germany +4

  7. A4-MR: Abnormality Aware Anatomical Alignment for MR

    Oct 9, 2026Noel D'souza, Zhijian Yang, Nishank Singla +15Medical Imaging Foundation ModelsRadiology VLMs

    GE Healthcare, Seattle, USA · GE Healthcare, Budapest, Hungary · Amazon, USA

  8. Structure-aware Keypoint Localization for Videofluoroscopic Swallowing Study

    Oct 6, 2026Kai Zhou, Chuanshen Chen, Runhao Zeng +6Keypoint DetectionSemi-Supervised Learning

    South China University of Technology · Shenzhen MSU-BIT University · The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University +1

  9. WILLIE: A Unified Framework and Benchmark for Wound Classification, Segmentation, and Localization

    Oct 4, 2026Gopi Trinadh Maddikunta, Shannan Hamlin, Hsin-Mei Chen +2Multi-Task LearningMedical Image Segmentation

    Department of Computer Science University of Houston Houston, Texas, USA · Houston Methodist Academic Institute Houston Methodist Hospital System Houston, Texas, USA

  10. Localization Lens for Improving Medical Vision-Language Models

    Oct 3, 2026Hasan Farooq, Murtaza Taj, Mehwish Nasim +1Contrastive Learning for VLMsMedical VLMs

    Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan · The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia · Information Technology University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

  11. An AI-Based Multi-Stage Approach for Androgenetic Alopecia Assessment from Low-Magnification Scalp Images

    Oct 1, 2026Mahmoud Raslan, Nada Omar, Omar Khaled +7Medical Image AnalysisMedical Diagnosis

    Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt · Dermatology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

  12. The RSNA Intracranial Aneurysm (RSNA-ICA) Dataset

    Oct 1, 2026Maria Correia de Verdier, Rachit Saluja, Jason Sho +37Medical Image Anomaly DetectionMedical Image Localization

    Department of Surgical Sciences, Section of Neuroradiology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University and Cornell Tech, New York, NY, USA · Department of Radiology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA +37

  13. XFlow: A Workflow Model for Instruction-Guided Lesion Segmentation in Chest X-rays

    Sep 28, 2026Geon Choi, Hangyul Yoon, Hyunki Park +2Promptable Image SegmentationMedical Image Segmentation

    KAIST · Korea University Guro Hospital · Samsung Medical Center

  14. Anatomy-Structured Hierarchical MIL for Weakly-Supervised Thoracic Disease Detection in Chest X-rays

    Sep 27, 2026Jeongin Kim, Sohyun Ahn, Seo Young Kang +6Chest X-Ray ClassificationMedical Image Analysis

    Division of Artificial Intelligence & Software, Ewha Womans University · Ewha Medical Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Ewha Womans University · Department of Nuclear Medicine, Ewha Womans University +2

  15. Tracker-Free Robotic Ultrasound Calibration with a Spherical-Marker Phantom and Threshold-Free Center Localization

    Sep 18, 2026Kyoungmo Koo, Guangshen Ma, Xueding Wang +1Robotic UltrasoundHand-Eye Calibration

    Department of Robotics, University of Michigan, 2505 Hayward St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA · Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, 1150 Medical Center Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA · Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Michigan Medical School, 1000 Wall St, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA

  16. STUNet-Fusion: Spatiotemporal Needle-Tip Localization in Ultrasound Video via Multi-Channel Motion Fusion

    Sep 16, 2026Chia-Chi Hsu, Chia-Hsuan Hsu, Che-Chou ShenMedical Image LocalizationUltrasound Imaging

    National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan · National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

  17. Weakly Supervised Spatial Grounding for Discriminative Attention-Based Ultrasound-Histopathology Alignment in Prostate Cancer Grading

    Sep 14, 2026Obed Korshie Dzikunu, Emma Willis, Mohammad Mahdi Abootorabi +7Computational PathologyCross-Modal Knowledge Distillation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada · Vector Institute, Toronto, Canada · School of Computing, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada +3

  18. LM-PCVMNet: Pediatric Cervical Vertebral Maturation Analysis with Deep Fusion of Landmarks and Metadata

    Sep 11, 2026Peng Wang, Wanzhen Song, Anli Wang +3Medical ImagingMedical Image Classification

    College of Cryptology and Cyber Science, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300350, China · College of Engineering, Yanbian University, Yanji, 133002, Jilin, China · Haihe Lab of ITAI, Tianjin, 300350, China +1

  19. Bridging Vision Foundation Model Priors with CLIP for Spatial-aware Few-shot Anomaly Detection in Medical Images

    Sep 11, 2026Juzheng Miao, Yuchen Yuan, Cheng Chen +1Few-Shot Anomaly DetectionMedical Image Anomaly Detection

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China · School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China +1

  20. GRIPNet: Gaussian Radial Intensity Prior Guided Architecture for Pulmonary Nodule Detection in CT

    Sep 10, 2026Haojie Yang, Ran SuSmall Object DetectionMedical Image Anomaly Detection

    College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

  21. WSPolypNet: Weakly Supervised Polyp Localization in Colonoscopy Videos

    Sep 8, 2026Giseong Hwang, Minjae Jo, Yeonghyeon Park +9Video Object SegmentationWeakly Supervised Learning

    Seoul National University · NVIDIA AI Technology Center

  22. Solving the Needle-in-a-Haystack Problem in Mammography Vision-Language Model with Differentiable Subset Sampling

    Sep 2, 2026Young Seok Jeon, Beatrice Brown-Mulry, Rohan Satya Isaac +5Radiology VLMsMedical Image Localization

    Department of Radiology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

  23. A Specialized Large Multimodal Model for Interpreting PET/CT in Head and Neck Cancer

    Sep 2, 2026Haengbok Chung, SunGyu Kim, Joo hyun Lee +4Medical VLMsMedical Imaging

    Interdisciplinary Program in Artificial Intelligence, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Department of Nuclear Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Department of Nuclear Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea. +5

  24. Do Medical Vision Models Reason About Anatomy? Probing the Spatial Inductive Biases of Learned Visual Representations

    Aug 28, 2026Naren Akash, Neeraja RamananMedical Imaging Foundation ModelsMedical Image Analysis

    Center for Visual Information Technology, IIIT Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India · Center for AI and Innovation, AIG Hospitals, Hyderabad, India

  25. XRF-to-Optical Field-of-View Localization with Vision Language Models

    Aug 18, 2026Xiangyu Yin, Tatjana Paunesku, Letonia Copeland-Hardin +7Cross-Modal Image RegistrationMicroscopy Image Analysis

    Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois, USA · Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA · University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA +1

  26. Automated ACL Footprint Identification Using 3D Deep Learning

    Aug 18, 2026Ruida Cheng, Gabriel Gibson, Ali Uneri +2Medical Image Localization3D Medical Imaging

    Scientific Application Services, Center for Information Technology, NIH, Bethesda, MD · Rehabilitation Medicine Department, Clinical Center, NIH, Bethesda, MD · Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD +1

  27. Pathology Transport: Optimal-Transport Explanations for Clinical Data, and When Their Heatmaps (Fail to) Localize Disease

    Aug 18, 2026Lalit KumarExplainable Medical Image AnalysisSaliency Map Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science The University of Texas at Austin

  28. Automatic Cephalometric Landmark Localization on CBCT-Derived Digitally Reconstructed Radiographs for Skeletal Malocclusion Classification

    Aug 17, 2026Benjamin Hou, Konstantinia Almpani, Janice S. Lee +1Anatomical Landmark DetectionMedical Image Localization

    Division of Intramural Research, National Library of Medicine · Craniofacial Anomalies and Regeneration Section, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

  29. Automated Fetal Brain MRI Biometry in Healthy and Pathological Cases

    Aug 16, 2026Ema Masterl, Tina Vipotnik Vesnaver, Nejc Šubič +1Anatomical Landmark DetectionFetal MRI

    Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia · University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia · Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

  30. How Good are Foundation Models in Longitudinal MRI Disease Progression Reasoning?

    Aug 13, 2026Wafa Al Ghallabi, Ritesh Thawkar, Sara Ghaboura +6Radiology VLMsMedical Image Analysis

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Department of Health Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Fatima College of Health Sciences, Abu Dhabi, UAE +1