Segmentation Uncertainty Estimation

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Overview

The field studies how reliably segmentation models identify pixels, objects, and boundaries, including uncertainty from ambiguous images or labels and uncertainty from limited model knowledge. Common approaches include deep ensembles and Monte Carlo dropout, evidential and Bayesian models, generative methods that produce multiple plausible masks, and calibration techniques such as conformal prediction. These estimates can help detect errors and distribution shifts, prioritize regions for human review, and represent disagreement among annotators. A central challenge is that well-calibrated scores do not always identify clinically important ambiguity or improve decisions, and results often vary across datasets, tasks, and review settings.

Latest papers

CardsList

100 papers14 papers in the last four weeks, up 133% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Segmentation Confidence for Arbitrary CNNs

    Oct 27, 2026Baris Oguz, Xing Yao, Claudia Tawil +5Segmentation Uncertainty EstimationMedical Image Segmentation

    University of Pennsylvania · Vanderbilt University

  2. Evaluation of Uncertainty-Aware Multi-Software Ensembles for Hippocampal Segmentation

    Oct 22, 2026Gabriel Oliveira-Stahl, Anna Schroder, James Moggridge +6Medical Image SegmentationSegmentation Uncertainty Estimation

    Hawkes Institute, Department of Computer Science, University College London, UK · Lysholm Department of Neuroradiology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK · Department of Brain Repair and Rehabilitation, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, UK +3

  3. Stochastic Nonlinearities Improve Uncertainty Estimation

    Oct 21, 2026Mohammad Sarhangzadeh, Amirreza M. Shebly, Doruk OnerUncertainty QuantificationNeural Network Activation Functions

    NeuraVision Lab, Bilkent University Ankara, Turkey

  4. Reliability-Preserving Compression for Deployable Medical Image Segmentation

    Oct 18, 2026Sagar Kumar, Shailja Sharma, Tirthajit Baruah +1Model CompressionNeural Network Compression

    Indian Institute of Science, India · Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India

  5. Uncertainty Gates the Gradient: Adaptive Updates for Generalized Few-Shot 3D Segmentation

    Oct 17, 2026Yifei Zhao, Fanyu Zhao, Shengtang Wu +33D Point Cloud Segmentation3D Semantic Segmentation

    Fudan University · University of Science and Technology of China

  6. A Decision-Aware Evaluation Protocol for Uncertainty in Medical Image Segmentation

    Oct 15, 2026Saket Maganti, Shreyank N GowdaUncertainty QuantificationSegmentation Uncertainty Estimation

    Independent Researcher · School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

  7. Contrastive uncertainty learning for robust multi-structure segmentation in lower-pelvic MR

    Oct 14, 2026Bilal Sidiqi, Yipei Wang, Wen Yan +3Medical Image Segmentation3D Medical Image Segmentation

    UCL Hawkes Institute, University College London, London, UK · Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, UK · Centre for Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom +2

  8. From Failure Prediction to Component Selection in Semantic Segmentation

    Oct 12, 2026Minhui Kang, Yiyao Zhang, Peizhe Long +3Selective PredictionSemantic Segmentation

    School of Power Engineering, Jiangxi Electric Vocational and Technical College, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China · College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, Shandong, China · College of Aviation Manufacturing Industry, Nanchang Hangkong University, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, China

  9. Thyroid Nodule Segmentation in Ultrasound Images with Conformal Uncertainty Estimation

    Oct 9, 2026Francesco Teodori, Pierpaolo Brutti, Umberto Ferraro PetrilloUltrasound Image SegmentationMedical Image Segmentation

    Department of Statistical Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

  10. Missing Modality-Aware Calibration for Trustworthy Brain Tumor Segmentation

    Oct 8, 2026Sol Lee, Hyunji Kim, Sungrae Hong +2Probability CalibrationBrain Tumor Segmentation

    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea

  11. A Probabilistic Perspective on Wasserstein-Based Evidential Uncertainty for Out-of-Distribution Segmentation

    Oct 7, 2026Arnold Brosch, Abdelrahman Eldesokey, Michael Felsberg +1Segmentation Uncertainty EstimationEvidential Deep Learning

    Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany · Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Education City, Gate 8, P.O. Box 5825, Doha, Qatar · Linköping University, SE-581 83, Linköping, Sweden

  12. Quantifying Volumetric Risk: Class-Aware Asymmetric Weighted Conformal Prediction for 3D Medical Image Segmentation

    Oct 7, 2026Shadi Alijani, Fereshteh Aghaee Meibodi, Homayoun NajjaranConformal PredictionSegmentation Uncertainty Estimation

    University of Victoria, 800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, BC, Canada

  13. GUARD: Geometric Uncertainty-Aware Point Cloud Denoising and Segmentation for Robotic Hard Disk Drive Disassembly

    Oct 6, 2026Zuoxu Wang, Xiao LiangPoint Cloud DenoisingPoint Cloud Learning

    Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 USA

  14. Uncertainty-Guided Handshake: Efficient Human-in-the-Loop Refinement for Surgical-Grade Glioma Segmentation

    Oct 1, 2026Samuel Hart, Ahmad Yahya, Ahmed Karam EldalyInteractive Medical Image SegmentationHuman-in-the-Loop Annotation

    Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QF, United Kingdom. · Department of Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. · UCL Hawkes Institute, University College London, Gower St., London, WC1E 6AE, United Kingdom.

  15. Towards Trustworthy AI for Glioma Diagnosis: A Task-Aware Evaluation of Uncertainty Quantification

    Sep 30, 2026Gonzalo Esteban Mosquera Rojas, Sebastian R. van der Voort, Carolin M. Pirkl +3Uncertainty QuantificationBrain Tumor Classification

    Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands · Department of Medical Informatics, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands · GE HealthCare, Munich, Germany +3

  16. A digital-twin framework for forecasting treatment-day imaging with contour uncertainty in adaptive proton radiotherapy

    Sep 21, 2026Yizhou Wu, Jie Ding, Justin Roper +6Digital TwinsHealthcare

    Department of Radiation Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30308 · Department of Human Oncology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53792 · Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637

  17. Combining Foundation Model Confidence and Monocular Depth for Training-Free Out-of-Distribution Segmentation

    Sep 19, 2026Serin Varghese, Fabian Hüger, Kira MaagOOD DetectionSegmentation Uncertainty Estimation

    CARIAD SE Wolfsburg, Germany

  18. Beyond Accuracy: Uncertainty-Guided Boundary Refinement for Reliable Biomedical Image Segmentation

    Sep 11, 2026Anima KujurMedical Image SegmentationBoundary-Aware Segmentation

    Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Computing (IWR), Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

  19. Cross-Model Agreement as a Deployment-Time Reliability Signal for Automatic Polyp Segmentation

    Sep 9, 2026Siddharth Gupta, Jitin SinglaPolyp SegmentationSegmentation Uncertainty Estimation

    Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, 247667, Uttarakhand, India

  20. From Few-Shot Segmentation to Clinician-in-the-Loop Medical Image Analysis

    Sep 9, 2026Yazhou ZhuInteractive Medical Image SegmentationSelective Prediction

  21. Latent-to-Latent Flow for Volumetric Stochastic Segmentation

    Sep 7, 2026Omar Todd, Sooha Kim, Raghav Mehta +5Flow MatchingMedical Image Segmentation

    Imperial College London, UK · The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, UK · Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK

  22. Understanding Temporal Semantic Stability in Open-Vocabulary UAV Perception through Metric 3D Fusion

    Aug 23, 2026Saurbh Singh JamwalTemporal ConsistencyOpen-Vocabulary 3D Segmentation

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

  23. The Impact of CutMix on Reliability and Robustness in Semantic Segmentation

    Aug 19, 2026Steven Landgraf, Markus UlrichSemantic SegmentationData Augmentation

    Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IPF), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany

  24. A Critical Synthesis of Uncertainty Quantification and Foundation Models for Semantic Segmentation

    Aug 19, 2026Steven Landgraf, Joceline Hinz, Markus UlrichSegmentation Uncertainty EstimationUncertainty Quantification

    Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IPF), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany

  25. A Multi-Annotator Study of Segmentation Noise and Uncertainty in Turbid Underwater Images

    Aug 15, 2026Galadrielle Humblot-Renaux, Vasiliki Ismiroglou, Malte PedersenSegmentation Uncertainty EstimationImage Segmentation

    Visual Analysis and Perception Laboratory, Aalborg University, Denmark · Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Denmark

  26. Beyond Boundary Noise: Aggregated Aleatoric Uncertainty Fails to Capture Presence Ambiguity in 3D Lung Nodule Segmentation

    Aug 14, 2026Simon Baur, Arne Schernich, Ekin Böke +2Segmentation Uncertainty EstimationMedical Image Segmentation

    Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, 10587 Berlin, Germany · Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany · The Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD), 10587 Berlin, Germany

  27. Reliability analysis for BraTS-GoAT segmentation: a controlled robustness study of deep-ensemble uncertainty

    Aug 13, 2026Riya Deepak Shet, Chenxi Liang, Le ZhangUncertainty QuantificationNeural Network Robustness

    Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, School of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

  28. Generative Semantic Segmentation via an Observable Semantic-Image Interface and Hierarchical Generator Evidence Alignment

    Aug 12, 2026Weize Cai, Yongqi Dong, Zhida Shao +1Segmentation Uncertainty EstimationSemantic Segmentation

    RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany · Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands · Chang’an University, Xi’an, China

  29. VIDS-Seg: Towards Reliable Uncertainty Quantification in Pediatric Cardiac Ultrasound Segmentation

    Aug 11, 2026Paul Fischer, Ece OzkanUltrasound Image SegmentationUncertainty Quantification

    Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

  30. ST-LoRA: Single Trajectory LoRA Ensemble for Uncertainty Aware Agricultural Segmentation

    Aug 2, 2026Mohamed Farag, Genc Hoxha, Yahia Maleki +2Image SegmentationEnsemble Learning

    Machine Learning in Agriculture Lab, Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany · Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia · Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany