arXiv Computer Vision

Topology-Aware Training and Spatial Diagnostics for Fiber Bundle Segmentation in Tracer Histology

The paper investigates fiber bundle segmentation in macaque tracer histology, comparing traditional BCE‑Dice loss with topology‑aware losses such as clDice, Betti matching, and Topograph using a frozen DINOv3 backbone. While BCE‑Dice yields the highest Dice score, Topograph achieves comparable Dice with lower topological error and fewer false positives. The authors also introduce Excess32, a spatial diagnostic that reveals oversegmentation issues not captured by conventional detection metrics, demonstrating that detection metrics alone are insufficient for evaluating segmentation quality.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 26

Tractography-Driven Synthetic Data Generation for Fiber Bundle Segmentation in Tracer Histology

arXiv:2606. 26898v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Diffusion MRI (dMRI) tractography enables non-invasive reconstruction of white-matter pathways, but its accuracy is fundamentally limited by indirect, low-resolution measurements of axonal organization.

By Kyriaki-Margarita Bintsi, Sparsh Makharia, Ya\"el Balbastre, Joselyn Romero Avila, Julia F. Lehman, Suzanne N. Haber, Anastasia Yendiki
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

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

The paper introduces RABR-Net, a two‑stage framework that refines biomedical image segmentation boundaries by combining multiple uncertainty measures into a boundary‑aware representation. A gated residual refiner uses this representation to selectively correct uncertain boundary pixels while preserving confident regions, leading to modest but statistically significant improvements in Dice, Boundary Dice, and HD95 metrics on a held‑out test set. Qualitative results show the refiner focuses on uncertain cytoplasm and nucleus boundaries, though calibration does not automatically improve.

By Anima Kujur
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Unsupervised Anatomical Feature Learning via Diffusion Models: Enhanced Medical Image Segmentation with Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models

The paper introduces an unsupervised approach to medical image segmentation by training a Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) on 21 unlabeled abdominal CT scans to learn anatomical features. The encoder weights from the DDPM are transferred to a U‑Net for downstream segmentation on the BTCV multi‑organ dataset, resulting in a significant Dice score improvement for liver segmentation from 0.75 to 0.93. In low‑data regimes, diffusion‑pretrained models retain robust performance, achieving high Dice scores even with only 10% of labeled data.

By Akshat G, Divyansh Gupta, Shaleen Bhatnagar, Shilpa Ankalaki, Tusar Kanti Mishra
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 11

SegCol Challenge: Semantic Segmentation for Tools and Fold Edges in Colonoscopy data

SegCol is a new dataset and benchmark for semantic segmentation of colon fold edges and surgical instruments in colonoscopy images, derived from the EndoMapper dataset. It offers manually annotated pixel‑level masks for three instrument classes and thin fold‑edge structures across temporally consistent image sequences, and serves as the basis for the SegCol Challenge within the EndoVis Challenge at MICCAI 2024. The study evaluates supervised segmentation and annotation‑efficient active learning, analyzes various segmentation metrics under structural perturbations, and highlights how metric behavior depends on target structure, underscoring the need for carefully selected evaluation protocols in endoscopic segmentation.

By Xinwei Ju, Rema Daher, Razvan Caramalau, Baoru Huang, Danail Stoyanov, Francisco Vasconcelos
arXiv Computer Vision
Aug 28

DALE-CT: Depth-Aware 2D Slice Encoders Learn an Anatomical World Model of Chest CT

DALE-CT introduces depth‑aware 2D slice encoders that learn an anatomical world model of chest CT scans without 3D or positional supervision. By sampling self‑supervised views across a physical $z$‑axis slab, the encoder captures how anatomy changes between neighboring slices, enabling it to recover slice ordering and distinguish slices by anatomy alone. The model, trained on a large 287k‑scan corpus, achieves state‑of‑the‑art performance on CT‑RATE and is released with full code and evaluation tools.

By Evan W. Damron, Mahmut S. Gokmen, Mitchell A. Klusty, Caroline N. Leach, Emily B. Collier, V. K. Cody Bumgardner
arXiv Computer Vision
Aug 27

Improving Cross-Site Whole-Heart Segmentation

The paper presents a modality‑routed 3D cardiac segmentation pipeline that combines TotalSegmentator‑initialized nnU‑Netv2 models with site‑characterized, label‑preserving appearance augmentation. By analyzing measurable image properties across sites, the authors design a bias‑field plus Bezier augmentation strategy that smooths spatial intensity perturbations and remaps intensities nonlinearly, followed by class‑wise largest‑connected‑component cleanup. On held‑out validation splits, this approach raises CT mean Dice from 0.8350 to 0.9135 and MRI mean Dice from 0.7695 to 0.7830 while reducing HD95, demonstrating improved cross‑site robustness in limited‑data whole‑heart segmentation.

By Tanish Mudaliar, Justin Li, Daniel Lin, Julianna Vo, Kaitao Liao, Xin Wang, Shu Hu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 28

Trustworthy Medical Segmentation: Uncertainty-Aware U-Net Evaluation Under Clinical Image Degradation

arXiv:2607. 22727v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Medical image segmentation models often report high benchmark accuracy under ideal imaging conditions, yet their failures under clinical degradation can be quiet: sensor noise, patient motion, low- resolution acquisition, and contrast variability may all alter model behavior without producing an obvious warning.

By Pranav Kaliaperumal, Manisha Kaliaperumal