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Main Authors: Meng, Liping, Nie, Fan, Zhang, Yunyun, Han, Chao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22361
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author Meng, Liping
Nie, Fan
Zhang, Yunyun
Han, Chao
author_facet Meng, Liping
Nie, Fan
Zhang, Yunyun
Han, Chao
contents This paper proposes a novel medical image segmentation framework, MNAS-Unet, which combines Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and Neural Architecture Search (NAS). MNAS-Unet dynamically explores promising network architectures through MCTS, significantly enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of architecture search. It also optimizes the DownSC and UpSC unit structures, enabling fast and precise model adjustments. Experimental results demonstrate that MNAS-Unet outperforms NAS-Unet and other state-of-the-art models in segmentation accuracy on several medical image datasets, including PROMISE12, Ultrasound Nerve, and CHAOS. Furthermore, compared with NAS-Unet, MNAS-Unet reduces the architecture search budget by 54% (early stopping at 139 epochs versus 300 epochs under the same search setting), while achieving a lightweight model with only 0.6M parameters and lower GPU memory consumption, which further improves its practical applicability. These results suggest that MNAS-Unet can improve search efficiency while maintaining competitive segmentation accuracy under practical resource constraints.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_22361
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimizing Neural Network Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation Using Monte Carlo Tree Search
Meng, Liping
Nie, Fan
Zhang, Yunyun
Han, Chao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
This paper proposes a novel medical image segmentation framework, MNAS-Unet, which combines Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and Neural Architecture Search (NAS). MNAS-Unet dynamically explores promising network architectures through MCTS, significantly enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of architecture search. It also optimizes the DownSC and UpSC unit structures, enabling fast and precise model adjustments. Experimental results demonstrate that MNAS-Unet outperforms NAS-Unet and other state-of-the-art models in segmentation accuracy on several medical image datasets, including PROMISE12, Ultrasound Nerve, and CHAOS. Furthermore, compared with NAS-Unet, MNAS-Unet reduces the architecture search budget by 54% (early stopping at 139 epochs versus 300 epochs under the same search setting), while achieving a lightweight model with only 0.6M parameters and lower GPU memory consumption, which further improves its practical applicability. These results suggest that MNAS-Unet can improve search efficiency while maintaining competitive segmentation accuracy under practical resource constraints.
title Optimizing Neural Network Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation Using Monte Carlo Tree Search
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22361