Medical Image Segmentation

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Overview

Medical image segmentation assigns labels to pixels or voxels to outline structures such as tumors, organs, vessels, and surgical instruments, enabling quantitative analysis and clinical workflows. Common approaches include U-Net-style convolutional networks, transformers and state-space models, and promptable foundation models; work also uses anatomical and topological priors, text guidance, and generative models. To reduce reliance on dense expert labels, researchers study self-supervised pretraining, semi- and weakly supervised learning, synthetic data, and interactive annotation, while domain adaptation addresses differences across scanners, hospitals, and modalities. A central challenge is making models reliable beyond their training data: high overlap scores can conceal boundary, connectivity, small-lesion, or subgroup failures, so external validation, uncertainty estimates, and clinically relevant metrics remain important.

Latest papers

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788 papers62 papers in the last four weeks, down 29% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

  1. Clinically-aligned ischemic stroke segmentation and ASPECTS scoring on NCCT imaging using a slice-gated loss on foundation representations

    Feb 27, 2026Hiba Azeem, Behraj Khan, Tahir Qasim SyedMedical Image SegmentationComputed Tomography

    Institute of Business Administration Karachi

  2. Topology-Driven Transferability Estimation of Medical Foundation Models for Segmentation

    Feb 27, 2026Jiaqi Tang, Shaoyang Zhang, Xiaoqi Wang +3Task Transferability EstimationMedical Imaging Foundation Models

    Peking University, Beijing, China · National Institute of Health Data Science, Peking University, Beijing, China · Institute of Medical Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China +3

  3. SegMate: Asymmetric Attention-Based Lightweight Architecture for Efficient Multi-Organ Segmentation

    Feb 27, 2026Andrei-Alexandru Bunea, Dan-Matei Popovici, Radu Tudor IonescuMulti-Organ SegmentationMedical Image Segmentation

    POLITEHNICA Bucharest · University of Bucharest

  4. BiM-GeoAttn-Net: Linear-Time Depth Modeling with Geometry-Aware Attention for 3D Aortic Dissection CTA Segmentation

    Feb 27, 2026Yuan Zhang, Lei Liu, Jialin Zhang +3Medical Image Segmentation3D Medical Image Segmentation

    College of Computer Science Sichuan Normal University Chengdu, Sichuan 610068, China · Zhejiang University & Ant Group Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China · State Key Laboratory of Public Big Data Guizhou University Guiyang, Guizhou 550025, China

  5. SegReg: Latent Space Regularization for Improved Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 26, 2026Puru Vaish, Amin Ranem, Felix Meister +3Latent-Space RegularizationMedical Image Segmentation

    Department of Applied Mathematics, Technical Medical Centre, University of Twente, The Netherlands · Digital Technology and Innovation, Siemens Healthineers, Erlangen, Germany

  6. SGDC: Structurally-Guided Dynamic Convolution for Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 26, 2026Bo Shi, Wei-ping Zhu, M. N. S. SwamyMedical Image SegmentationDynamic Convolution

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia University

  7. SpectralMamba-UNet: Frequency-Disentangled State Space Modeling for Texture-Structure Consistent Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 26, 2026Fuhao Zhang, Lei Liu, Jialin Zhang +2Medical Image SegmentationVisual SSMs

    College of Computer Science, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610068, China · Zhejiang University & Ant Group, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China · State Key Laboratory of Public Big Data, Guizhou University, Guiyang, Guizhou 550025, China

  8. Optimizing Neural Network Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation Using Monte Carlo Tree Search

    Feb 25, 2026Liping Meng, Fan Nie, Yunyun Zhang +1Medical Image SegmentationNeural Architecture Search

  9. BiCLIP: Bidirectional and Consistent Language-Image Processing for Robust Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 25, 2026Saivan Talaei, Fatemeh Daneshfar, Abdulhady Abas Abdullah +1Multimodal RobustnessMedical VLMs

    Department of Computer Engineering, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Kurdistan, Iran · Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Center, University of Kurdistan, Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq · Center for Machine Vision and Signal Analysis, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

  10. Understanding Annotation Error Propagation and Learning an Adaptive Policy for Expert Intervention in Barrett's Video Segmentation

    Feb 25, 2026Lokesha Rasanjalee, Jin Lin Tan, Dileepa Pitawela +2Interactive Medical Image SegmentationHuman-in-the-Loop Annotation

    School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Adelaide University, Australia · The Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), Australia · Adelaide Medical School, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Adelaide University, Australia +1

  11. Innovative Tooth Segmentation Using Hierarchical Features and Bidirectional Sequence Modeling

    Feb 25, 2026Xinxin Zhao, Jian Jiang, Yan Tian +5Medical Image Segmentation

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang Gongshang University, 310018, Hangzhou, China · School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, Communication University of China, 100024, Beijing, China · Center of Big Data, China Digital Culture Group Co., Ltd, 100176, Beijing, China +6

  12. VasGuideNet: Vascular Topology-Guided Couinaud Liver Segmentation with Structural Contrastive Loss

    Feb 25, 2026Chaojie Shen, Jingjun Gu, Zihao Zhao +4Medical Image Segmentation3D Medical Image Segmentation

    Pujian Medical Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou, China · Keyi College of Zhejiang Sci-tech University, ShaoXing, China · College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

  13. Adversarial Robustness of Deep Learning-Based Thyroid Nodule Segmentation in Ultrasound

    Feb 25, 2026Nicholas Dietrich, David McShannonAdversarial RobustnessBlack-Box Adversarial Attacks

    Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada · Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

  14. Mask-HybridGNet: Graph-based segmentation with emergent anatomical correspondence from pixel-level supervision

    Feb 24, 2026Nicolás Gaggion, Maria J. Ledesma-Carbayo, Stergios Christodoulidis +2Medical Image SegmentationMedical Image Analysis

    APOLO Biotech, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina · Departamento de Computación, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina · Instituto de Ciencias de la Computación (ICC), CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina +4

  15. Multimodal MRI Report Findings Supervised Brain Lesion Segmentation with Substructures

    Feb 24, 2026Yubin Ge, Yongsong Huang, Xiaofeng LiuMedical Image SegmentationBrain Tumor Segmentation

    Amazon AWS · Yale University · Tohoku University

  16. OrthoDiffusion: A Generalizable Multi-Task Diffusion Foundation Model for Musculoskeletal MRI Interpretation

    Feb 24, 2026Tian Lan, Lei Xu, Zimu Yuan +8Diffusion Models for Medical Image SegmentationMedical Imaging Foundation Models

    Center for Applied Statistics and School of Statistics, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China. · Department of Sports Medicine, Peking University Third Hospital, Institute of Sports Medicine of Peking University, Beijing, China. · Beijing Key Laboratory of Research and Translation for Drugs and Medical Devices in Precision Diagnosis and Treatment of Sports Injuries, Beijing, China. +4

  17. Leveraging Causal Reasoning Method for Explaining Medical Image Segmentation Models

    Feb 24, 2026Limai Jiang, Ruitao Xie, Bokai Yang +6Explainable Medical Image AnalysisMedical Image Segmentation

    Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology +3

  18. MedCLIPSeg: Probabilistic Vision-Language Adaptation for Data-Efficient and Generalizable Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 23, 2026Taha Koleilat, Hojat Asgariandehkordi, Omid Nejati Manzari +3Medical Image SegmentationText-Guided Image Segmentation

    Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

  19. Using Unsupervised Domain Adaptation Semantic Segmentation for Pulmonary Embolism Detection in Computed Tomography Pulmonary Angiogram (CTPA) Images

    Feb 23, 2026Wen-Liang Lin, Yun-Chien ChengMedical Image SegmentationUnsupervised Domain Adaptation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan

  20. HD-TTA: Hypothesis-Driven Test-Time Adaptation for Safer Brain Tumor Segmentation

    Feb 23, 2026Kartik Jhawar, Lipo WangTest-Time AdaptationMedical Image Segmentation

  21. Redefining the Down-Sampling Scheme of U-Net for Precision Biomedical Image Segmentation

    Feb 23, 2026Mingjie Li, Yizheng Chen, Md Tauhidul Islam +1U-NetMedical Image Segmentation

    Department of Radiation Oncology Stanford University, CA, USA

  22. BiSe-Unet: A Lightweight Dual-path U-Net with Attention-refined Context for Real-time Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 22, 2026M Iffat Hossain, Laura BrattainLightweight Neural NetworksMedical Image Segmentation

    Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Central Florida · Department of Medicine, University of Central Florida College of Medicine

  23. SegMoTE: Token-Level Mixture of Experts for Medical Image Segmentation

    Feb 22, 2026Yujie Lu, Jingwen Li, Sibo Ju +5Medical Image SegmentationVision Foundation Model Adaptation

    Sichuan University · Xinjiang University · Fuzhou University +1

  24. Promptable segmentation with region exploration enables minimal-effort expert-level prostate cancer delineation

    Feb 19, 2026Junqing Yang, Natasha Thorley, Ahmed Nadeem Abbasi +4Medical Image SegmentationInteractive Medical Image Segmentation

    UCL Hawkes Institute; Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, UK. · Centre of Medical Imaging, University College London, UK. · Department of Oncology, Aga Khan University Hospital, Pakistan. +1

  25. Cholec80-port: A Geometrically Consistent Trocar Port Segmentation Dataset for Robust Surgical Scene Understanding

    Feb 19, 2026Shunsuke Kikuchi, Atsushi Kouno, Hiroki MatsuzakiMedical Image SegmentationMedical Image Benchmarks

    Jmees Inc., Kashiwa-city, Chiba, Japan

  26. Phi-SegNet: Phase-Integrated Supervision for Medical Image Segmentation

    Jan 22, 2026Shams Nafisa Ali, Taufiq HasanFrequency-Domain Image ProcessingMedical Image Segmentation

    mHealth Lab, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA · Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

  27. Tracing 3D Anatomy in 2D Strokes: A Multi-Stage Projection Driven Approach to Cervical Spine Fracture Identification

    Jan 21, 2026Fabi Nahian Madhurja, Rusab Sarmun, Muhammad E. H. Chowdhury +3Image SegmentationMedical Image Analysis

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BRAC University, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh · Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Dhaka, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh · Department of Electrical Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar +1

  28. MedVL-SAM2: A unified 3D medical vision-language model for multimodal reasoning and prompt-driven segmentation

    Jan 14, 2026Yang Xing, Jiong Wu, Savas Ozdemir +4Interactive Medical Image SegmentationUnified Multimodal Models

    Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA · Department of Radiology, University of Florida, Jacksonville, FL, USA · Research Computing, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA +2

  29. Automated Lesion Segmentation of Stroke MRI Using nnU-Net: A Comprehensive External Validation Across Acute and Chronic Lesions

    Jan 13, 2026Tammar Truzman, Matthew A. Lambon Ralph, Ajay D. HalaiMedical Image SegmentationConvolutional Neural Networks

    MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

  30. ReFRM3D: A Radiomics-enhanced Fused Residual Multiparametric 3D Network with Multi-Scale Feature Fusion for Glioma Characterization

    Dec 27, 2025Md. Abdur Rahman, Md Noman Hossain, Arefin Ittesafun Abian +4BraTSMedical Image Segmentation

    Applied Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems (AAIINS) Laboratory, Dhaka 1217, Bangladesh · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, United International University, Dhaka, 1212, Bangladesh · Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, 3153, Australia +1