# Computing Valid p-values for Image Segmentation by Selective Inference

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.00629 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00629/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jun 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [More Powerful Conditional Selective Inference for Generalized Lasso by Parametric Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04920/) (2021)
- [Valid P-Value for Deep Learning-Driven Salient Region](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02437/) (2023)
- [Conditional Selective Inference for Robust Regression and Outlier Detection using Piecewise-Linear Homotopy Continuation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10840/) (2021)
- [Valid and Exact Statistical Inference for Multi-dimensional Multiple Change-Points by Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08989/) (2021)
- [CAD-DA: Controllable Anomaly Detection after Domain Adaptation by Statistical Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14608/) (2023)
- [Exact Statistical Inference for the Wasserstein Distance by Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.14206/) (2021)
- [Statistical Test for Anomaly Detections by Variational Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03724/) (2024)
- [Exact Selective Inference with Randomization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12940/) (2022)
- [Selective Inference for Changepoint detection by Recurrent Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14964/) (2023)
- [Case-based Similar Image Retrieval for Weakly Annotated Large Histopathological Images of Malignant Lymphoma Using Deep Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03602/) (2021)
- [Statistical Test for Feature Selection Pipelines by Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18902/) (2024)
- [Statistical Test for Auto Feature Engineering by Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19768/) (2024)
- [Quantifying Statistical Significance of Deep Nearest Neighbor Anomaly Detection via Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12978/) (2025)
- [Transformer-based Personalized Attention Mechanism for Medical Images with Clinical Records](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03003/) (2022)
- [Controllable RANSAC-based Anomaly Detection via Hypothesis Testing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15133/) (2024)
- [Change Point Detection in the Frequency Domain with Statistical Reliability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03062/) (2025)
- [Statistical Inference for Autoencoder-based Anomaly Detection after Representation Learning-based Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07049/) (2025)
- [Selective Inference for Sparse Multitask Regression with Applications in Neuroimaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14220/) (2022)
- [Bounded P-values in Parametric Programming-based Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11351/) (2023)
- [Statistical Test for Diffusion-Based Anomaly Localization via Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11789/) (2024)
- [Statistical Test for Saliency Maps of Graph Neural Networks via Selective Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16893/) (2025)
- [Statistical Inference for the Dynamic Time Warping Distance, with Application to Abnormal Time-Series Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06593/) (2022)
- [Statistical Inference for Clustering-based Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18633/) (2025)
- [Post-Anomaly Detection Inference for Deep SVDD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37935/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image segmentation is one of the most fundamental tasks of computer vision. In many practical applications, it is essential to properly evaluate the reliability of individual segmentation results. In this study, we propose a novel framework to provide the statistical significance of segmentation results in the form of p-values. Specifically, we consider a statistical hypothesis test for determining the difference between the object and the background regions. This problem is challenging because the difference can be deceptively large (called segmentation bias) due to the adaptation of the segmentation algorithm to the data. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce a statistical approach called selective inference, and develop a framework to compute valid p-values in which the segmentation bias is properly accounted for. Although the proposed framework is potentially applicable to various segmentation algorithms, we focus in this paper on graph cut-based and threshold-based segmentation algorithms, and develop two specific methods to compute valid p-values for the segmentation results obtained by these algorithms. We prove the theoretical validity of these two methods and demonstrate their practicality by applying them to segmentation problems for medical images.