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Main Authors: Xu, Guoping, Udupa, Jayaram K., Luo, Jax, Zhao, Songlin, Yu, Yajun, Raymond, Scott B., Peng, Hao, Ning, Lipeng, Rathi, Yogesh, Liu, Wei, Zhang, You
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20139
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author Xu, Guoping
Udupa, Jayaram K.
Luo, Jax
Zhao, Songlin
Yu, Yajun
Raymond, Scott B.
Peng, Hao
Ning, Lipeng
Rathi, Yogesh
Liu, Wei
Zhang, You
author_facet Xu, Guoping
Udupa, Jayaram K.
Luo, Jax
Zhao, Songlin
Yu, Yajun
Raymond, Scott B.
Peng, Hao
Ning, Lipeng
Rathi, Yogesh
Liu, Wei
Zhang, You
contents Medical image segmentation has advanced rapidly over the past two decades, largely driven by deep learning, which has enabled accurate and efficient delineation of cells, tissues, organs, and pathologies across diverse imaging modalities. This progress raises a fundamental question: to what extent have current models overcome persistent challenges, and what gaps remain? In this work, we provide an in-depth review of medical image segmentation, tracing its progress and key developments over the past decade. We examine core principles, including multiscale analysis, attention mechanisms, and the integration of prior knowledge, across the encoder, bottleneck, skip connections, and decoder components of segmentation networks. Our discussion is organized around seven key dimensions: (1) the shift from supervised to semi-/unsupervised learning, (2) the transition from organ segmentation to lesion-focused tasks, (3) advances in multi-modality integration and domain adaptation, (4) the role of foundation models and transfer learning, (5) the move from deterministic to probabilistic segmentation, (6) the progression from 2D to 3D and 4D segmentation, and (7) the trend from model invocation to segmentation agents. Together, these perspectives provide a holistic overview of the trajectory of deep learning-based medical image segmentation and aim to inspire future innovation. To support ongoing research, we maintain a continually updated repository of relevant literature and open-source resources at https://github.com/apple1986/medicalSegReview
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20139
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is the medical image segmentation problem solved? A survey of current developments and future directions
Xu, Guoping
Udupa, Jayaram K.
Luo, Jax
Zhao, Songlin
Yu, Yajun
Raymond, Scott B.
Peng, Hao
Ning, Lipeng
Rathi, Yogesh
Liu, Wei
Zhang, You
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
Medical image segmentation has advanced rapidly over the past two decades, largely driven by deep learning, which has enabled accurate and efficient delineation of cells, tissues, organs, and pathologies across diverse imaging modalities. This progress raises a fundamental question: to what extent have current models overcome persistent challenges, and what gaps remain? In this work, we provide an in-depth review of medical image segmentation, tracing its progress and key developments over the past decade. We examine core principles, including multiscale analysis, attention mechanisms, and the integration of prior knowledge, across the encoder, bottleneck, skip connections, and decoder components of segmentation networks. Our discussion is organized around seven key dimensions: (1) the shift from supervised to semi-/unsupervised learning, (2) the transition from organ segmentation to lesion-focused tasks, (3) advances in multi-modality integration and domain adaptation, (4) the role of foundation models and transfer learning, (5) the move from deterministic to probabilistic segmentation, (6) the progression from 2D to 3D and 4D segmentation, and (7) the trend from model invocation to segmentation agents. Together, these perspectives provide a holistic overview of the trajectory of deep learning-based medical image segmentation and aim to inspire future innovation. To support ongoing research, we maintain a continually updated repository of relevant literature and open-source resources at https://github.com/apple1986/medicalSegReview
title Is the medical image segmentation problem solved? A survey of current developments and future directions
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20139