Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

Ask about this topic

Overview

Weakly supervised semantic segmentation studies how to assign a class to every pixel when training data lacks complete pixel-level masks, reducing the cost of annotation. Common approaches turn image labels into class activation maps, refine noisy pseudo-masks with self-training or consistency losses, and use boundaries, spatial priors, or vision-language foundation models to improve localization. Methods are tested on benchmarks such as PASCAL VOC and MS COCO, as well as medical, satellite, and other domain-specific imagery with image-level labels, points, or scribbles. A central challenge is that sparse cues often highlight only the most distinctive parts of objects, so better coverage and boundaries must be balanced against noisy pseudo-labels and limited generalization across domains.

Latest papers

CardsList

33 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, level with the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. TAG: Calibrating SAM3 for Universal Image Segmentation without Dense Supervision

    Oct 10, 2026Hao Zhu, Heyu Sun, Shuo Jin +2Promptable Image SegmentationOpen-Vocabulary Semantic Segmentation

  2. Preference-Guided Adaptation for Open-Vocabulary Semantic Segmentation via Prompt Disagreement

    Sep 28, 2026Hyun-Kurl Jang, Jihun Kim, Kuk-Jin YoonWeakly Supervised Semantic SegmentationPreference Optimization

    Visual Intelligence Lab. KAIST

  3. CRF Loss is How Networks Should Learn Boundaries in Weakly Supervised Segmentation

    Sep 28, 2026Joshua Li, Yuri BoykovConditional Random FieldsWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    Cheriton School of Computer Science University of Waterloo

  4. DR.WILSS: Diffusion-Based Replay for Weakly Supervised Continual Semantic Segmentation

    Sep 16, 2026Leon Arthur Marx, Francesco Barbato, Matteo Caligiuri +1Class-Incremental LearningSemantic Segmentation

    Dpt. Information Engineering University of Padova Padova, Italy

  5. Beyond Weak Labels: Prompt-Guided Local Refinement for Weakly Supervised Water Segmentation in High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery

    Sep 9, 2026Muhammad Farhan Humayun, Mohammad Imangholiloo, Afifah Shah +2Remote Sensing Image SegmentationPromptable Image Segmentation

    Department of Computing, University of Turku, Finland · Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography, Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, National Land Survey of Finland, Espoo, Finland

  6. SePArate: Segmenting Patterns from Defects in Wafer Manufacturing Using Weak Supervision

    Aug 31, 2026Dain Kwon, Changmin Shin, Sunjong Park +5Weakly Supervised Image SegmentationSemiconductor Manufacturing

    Seoul National University · SK Hynix

  7. Weakly Supervised Seafloor Segmentation for Seagrass Habitat Mapping in Side-Scan Sonar Imagery

    Aug 25, 2026Hayat Rajani, Nuno Gracias, Rafael GarciaRemote Sensing Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    Computer Vision and Robotics Research Institute (ViCOROB) of the University of Girona, Spain

  8. Leveraging existing sparse point annotations for benthic imagery dense segmentation

    Aug 18, 2026Cesar Borja, Breck A. McCollum, Jarret E. Byrnes +2Image SegmentationSemantic Segmentation

    DIIS - I3A, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain · Berklee College of Music, Boston, USA · University of Massachusetts: Boston, Boston, USA +1

  9. Weakly Supervised Polar Low Segmentation in Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery

    Aug 14, 2026Andrea Federici, Jakob Grahn, Giacomo Boracchi +1Remote Sensing Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, UiT the Arctic University of Norway · NORCE, The Norwegian Research Centre AS · DEIB, Politecnico di Milano

  10. Warping Earth Observations for better ice labeling in the Marginal Marginal Ice Zone

    Aug 12, 2026Tom Kelly, Martin S. J. RogersRemote Sensing Image SegmentationCross-Modal Alignment

    British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge

  11. ProBAG: Prototype-Guided Boundary-Aware Graph Diffusion for Weakly Supervised Histopathology Segmentation

    Aug 12, 2026Duy-Dong Nguyen, Le-Van Thai, Hoai Nhan Pham +3Histopathology Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    AI VIETNAM Lab, Vietnam · Department of Mechanical System Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Republic of Korea · Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, USA +1

  12. Robust Activation Map Rectification for Weakly Supervised Volumetric Segmentation: Temporal Coherence as a Free Lunch

    Jul 22, 2026Renshu Gu, Jialiang Chen, Fei Gao +8Weakly Supervised Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    School of Computer Science, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, China · Hangzhou Institute of Technology, Xidian University, Hangzhou 311231, China · University of Yamanashi +3

  13. Toward Efficient Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation Using Only Low-Magnification Histopathological Images

    Jul 12, 2026Dung Minh Do, Nhat-Thanh Huynh, Duc Minh Huynh +2Weakly Supervised Image SegmentationHistopathology Image Segmentation

    University of Information Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

  14. TACoS: Weakly Supervised Learning of Two-Dimensional Materials from Scribble Annotations to Precise Segmentation

    Jul 8, 2026Jiabei Chen, Liping Zhang, Jiang-Bin Wu +6Weakly Supervised Semantic SegmentationSemi-Supervised Learning

    AnnLab, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China · Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering & School of Integrated Circuits, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China · State Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Physics and Chip Technologies, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China

  15. C2RM-Seg: Causal Counterfactual Reasoning with Structural-Semantic Priors for Weakly Supervised Histopathological Tissue Segmentation

    Jun 24, 2026Hualong Zhang, Siyang Feng, Zihan Huan +4Computational PathologyWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

    Guangxi Key Laboratory of Image and Graphic Intelligent Processing, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China · International Joint Research Laboratory of Spatio-temporal Information and Intelligent Location Services, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China · School of Computer Science and Information Security, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China

  16. Single-Stage Hierarchical Rectification for Weakly Supervised Histopathology Segmentation

    Jun 18, 2026Duc T. Nguyen, Hoang-Long Nguyen, Thanh-Ha DO +1Computational PathologyWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

    College of Engineering & Computer Science, VinUniversity, Hanoi, Vietnam · VinUni-Illinois Smart Health Center, VinUniversity, Hanoi, Vietnam · The Computer Vision and Medical AI Lab, VinUniversity, Hanoi, Vietnam +1

  17. LASA: A Weak Supervision Method for Open-Vocabulary Scene Sketch Semantic Segmentation

    Jun 10, 2026Liwen Yi, Xianlin Zhang, Yue Zhang +2Weakly Supervised Image SegmentationCross-Layer Attention

    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Beijing, China

  18. Weakly Supervised Incremental Segmentation via Semantic Anchors and Spatial Arbitration

    Jun 2, 2026Zhonggai Wang, Kai Fang, Guangyu GaoClass-Incremental LearningWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

  19. Weakly Supervised Segmentation as Semantic-Based Regularization

    May 13, 2026Stefano Colamonaco, Andrei-Bogdan Florea, Jaron MaeneImage SegmentationWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

    KU Leuven · Apixa

  20. Optimization in Sparse 2D to Dense 3D Weakly Supervised Learning: Application to Multi-Label Segmentation of Large ex vivo MRI Data

    May 12, 2026Paul Hoareau, Kuan Yi Wang, Brandon Bujak +6Weakly Supervised Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    NeuroPoly Lab, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada · ´Ecole Centrale de Lyon, Lyon, France · Mila - Quebec AI Institute, Montreal, QC, Canada +9

  21. What-Where Transformer: A Slot-Centric Visual Backbone for Concurrent Representation and Localization

    May 12, 2026Ryota Yoshihashi, Masahiro Kada, Satoshi Ikehata +2Visual AttentionVision Transformer

    Institute of Science Tokyo · 2DENSO IT Laboratory · 3National Institute of Informatics

  22. ZScribbleSeg: A comprehensive segmentation framework with modeling of efficient annotation and maximization of scribble supervision

    May 7, 2026Ke Zhang, Bomin Wang, Hangqi Zhou +1Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

    School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

  23. DiCLIP: Diffusion Model Enhances CLIP's Dense Knowledge for Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    May 6, 2026Zhiwei Yang, Pengfei Song, Yucong Meng +3Vision-Language ModelsWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

    Academy for Engineering and Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China · Shandong Computer Science Center, China · Digital Medical Research Center, School of Basic Medical Science, Fudan University, and also with Shanghai Key Lab of Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, Shanghai 200032, China +1

  24. Semantic Segmentation for Histopathology using Learned Regularization based on Global Proportions

    Apr 27, 2026Yangping Li, Thomas Pinetz, Michael Hölzel +2Computational PathologyImage Segmentation

    Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str. 25, 53127 Bonn, Germany · Institute for Applied Mathematics, University of Bonn, Endenicher Allee 60, 53115 Bonn, Germany · Institute of Experimental Oncology, University Hospital Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str. 25, 53127 Bonn, Germany

  25. SegMix:Shuffle-based Feedback Learning for Semantic Segmentation of Pathology Images

    Apr 17, 2026Zhiling Yan, Sicheng Chen, Tianyi Zhang +3Computational PathologyImage Segmentation

    JD AI Research, Beijing, China · School of Microelectronics, Xi’an Jiaotong University · Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University

  26. Do Instance Priors Help Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation?

    Apr 13, 2026Anurag Das, Anna Kukleva, Xinting Hu +2Weakly Supervised Semantic SegmentationPromptable Image Segmentation

    Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarland Informatics Campus · University of Technology Nuremberg

  27. Data-Efficient Semantic Segmentation of 3D Point Clouds via Open-Vocabulary Image Segmentation-based Pseudo-Labeling

    Apr 13, 2026Takahiko Furuya3D Semantic SegmentationSemantic Segmentation

    University of Yamanashi, 4-3-11 Takeda, Kofu-shi, Yamanashi-ken, 400-8511, Japan

  28. OVS-DINO: Open-Vocabulary Segmentation via Structure-Aligned SAM-DINO with Language Guidance

    Apr 9, 2026Haoxi Zeng, Qiankun Liu, Yi Bin +5Open-Vocabulary Semantic SegmentationBoundary-Aware Segmentation

    Tongji University Shanghai, China · Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong, China · University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Chengdu, China +1

  29. ModuSeg: Decoupling Object Discovery and Semantic Retrieval for Training-Free Weakly Supervised Segmentation

    Apr 8, 2026Qingze He, Fagui Liu, Dengke Zhang +2Weakly Supervised Image SegmentationWeakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation

    South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China · Pengcheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, China

  30. Weakly Supervised Teacher-Student Framework with Progressive Pseudo-mask Refinement for Gland Segmentation

    Mar 9, 2026Hikmat Khan, Wei Chen, Muhammad Khalid Khan NiaziHistopathology Image SegmentationMedical Image Segmentation

    Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA