Dante: An Open Source Model Pre-Training and Fine-Tuning Tool for the Dafne Federated Framework for Medical Image Segmentation
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866917462089400320 |
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| author | Timpano, Giuseppe Kumari, Dibya Caligiuri, Maria Eugenia Santini, Francesco |
| author_facet | Timpano, Giuseppe Kumari, Dibya Caligiuri, Maria Eugenia Santini, Francesco |
| contents | Adapting pre-trained deep learning segmentation models to new clinical domains is a persistent challenge in medical image analysis, particularly when annotated data at the target site are scarce. Parameter-efficient fine-tuning strategies offer a principled solution by selectively updating a controlled subset of model parameters, preserving previously acquired representations while reducing the risk of overfitting on small datasets. This paper introduces DAfNe TrainEr (Dante), an open-source module integrating with the Dafne federated segmentation ecosystem as a dedicated training and fine-tuning backend. Dante supports training from scratch with automatic architecture configuration, configurable layer freezing schedules, and Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) extended to N-dimensional convolutional layers through channel-wise factorization. To validate the module, Gradual Unfreezing (GU) and LoRA are assessed across realistic cross-domain MRI transfer scenarios covering abdominal organ segmentation and brain white matter lesion segmentation, under full-data and few-shot conditions. GU reduced the epochs required to reach 85% of peak performance by up to 63.6% compared to training from scratch, while LoRA achieved Dice Similarity Coefficients up to 0.957 in data-rich scenarios. Both strategies outperformed the baseline across all tested domains, with gains amplified by richer pre-training datasets. These results validate Dante as a domain-agnostic fine-tuning module for medical image segmentation in real clinical deployment conditions. Dante code is available at https://github.com/dafne-imaging/dafne-torch-trainer while Dafne ecosystem project is available at https://github.com/dafne-imaging. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_03602 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Dante: An Open Source Model Pre-Training and Fine-Tuning Tool for the Dafne Federated Framework for Medical Image Segmentation Timpano, Giuseppe Kumari, Dibya Caligiuri, Maria Eugenia Santini, Francesco Image and Video Processing Adapting pre-trained deep learning segmentation models to new clinical domains is a persistent challenge in medical image analysis, particularly when annotated data at the target site are scarce. Parameter-efficient fine-tuning strategies offer a principled solution by selectively updating a controlled subset of model parameters, preserving previously acquired representations while reducing the risk of overfitting on small datasets. This paper introduces DAfNe TrainEr (Dante), an open-source module integrating with the Dafne federated segmentation ecosystem as a dedicated training and fine-tuning backend. Dante supports training from scratch with automatic architecture configuration, configurable layer freezing schedules, and Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) extended to N-dimensional convolutional layers through channel-wise factorization. To validate the module, Gradual Unfreezing (GU) and LoRA are assessed across realistic cross-domain MRI transfer scenarios covering abdominal organ segmentation and brain white matter lesion segmentation, under full-data and few-shot conditions. GU reduced the epochs required to reach 85% of peak performance by up to 63.6% compared to training from scratch, while LoRA achieved Dice Similarity Coefficients up to 0.957 in data-rich scenarios. Both strategies outperformed the baseline across all tested domains, with gains amplified by richer pre-training datasets. These results validate Dante as a domain-agnostic fine-tuning module for medical image segmentation in real clinical deployment conditions. Dante code is available at https://github.com/dafne-imaging/dafne-torch-trainer while Dafne ecosystem project is available at https://github.com/dafne-imaging. |
| title | Dante: An Open Source Model Pre-Training and Fine-Tuning Tool for the Dafne Federated Framework for Medical Image Segmentation |
| topic | Image and Video Processing |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.03602 |