mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A survey of loss functions for semantic segmentation

arXiv 2006.14822 ↗First posted 26 Jun 2020eess.IV cs.CV cs.LGcited by 216

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Image Segmentation has been an active field of research as it has a wide range of applications, ranging from automated disease detection to self-driving cars. In the past five years, various papers came up with different objective loss functions used in different cases such as biased data, sparse segmentation, etc. In this paper, we have summarized some of the well-known loss functions widely used for Image Segmentation and listed out the cases where their usage can help in fast and better convergence of a model. Furthermore, we have also introduced a new log-cosh dice loss function and compared its performance on the NBFS skull-segmentation open-source data-set with widely used loss functions. We also showcased that certain loss functions perform well across all data-sets and can be taken as a good baseline choice in unknown data distribution scenarios. Our code is available at Github: https://github.com/shruti-jadon/Semantic-Segmentation-Loss-Functions.

Key facts. Cited by 216 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 26 Jun 2020.

Builds on

No reference list yet.

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 31; 2022: 44; 2023: 52; 2024: 41; 2025: 30; 2026: 18.

216 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2022FLamby: Datasets and Benchmarks for Cross-Silo Federated Learning in Realistic Healthcare Settingscited by 121
  2. 2021Unified Focal loss: Generalising Dice and cross entropy-based losses to handle class imbalanced medical image segmentationcited by 88
  3. 2023Semantic Segmentation using Vision Transformers: A surveycited by 73
  4. 2023LVM-Med: Learning Large-Scale Self-Supervised Vision Models for Medical Imaging via Second-order Graph Matchingcited by 60
  5. 2024GaussianObject: High-Quality 3D Object Reconstruction from Four Views with Gaussian Splattingcited by 59
  6. 2023Strategic Preys Make Acute Predators: Enhancing Camouflaged Object Detectors by Generating Camouflaged Objectscited by 56
  7. 2022CoSMix: Compositional Semantic Mix for Domain Adaptation in 3D LiDAR Segmentationcited by 54
  8. 2022GaitEdge: Beyond Plain End-to-end Gait Recognition for Better Practicalitycited by 52
  9. 2023Overcoming Data Scarcity in Biomedical Imaging with a Foundational Multi-Task Modelcited by 40
  10. 2022D-Former: A U-shaped Dilated Transformer for 3D Medical Image Segmentationcited by 35
  11. 2022GIPSO: Geometrically Informed Propagation for Online Adaptation in 3D LiDAR Segmentationcited by 35
  12. 2024Image Segmentation in Foundation Model Era: A Surveycited by 35
38 more
  1. 2022A Comprehensive Survey of Regression Based Loss Functions for Time Series Forecastingcited by 33
  2. 2023Loss Functions in the Era of Semantic Segmentation: A Survey and Outlookcited by 33
  3. 2023PhenoBench -- A Large Dataset and Benchmarks for Semantic Image Interpretation in the Agricultural Domaincited by 31
  4. 2023Directional Connectivity-based Segmentation of Medical Imagescited by 30
  5. 2024Open-Vocabulary Attention Maps with Token Optimization for Semantic Segmentation in Diffusion Modelscited by 29
  6. 2022Rank-based Decomposable Losses in Machine Learning: A Surveycited by 26
  7. 2024UniVS: Unified and Universal Video Segmentation with Prompts as Queriescited by 26
  8. 2024UniMix: Towards Domain Adaptive and Generalizable LiDAR Semantic Segmentation in Adverse Weathercited by 24
  9. 2023Compositional Semantic Mix for Domain Adaptation in Point Cloud Segmentationcited by 20
  10. 2022Degradation-invariant Enhancement of Fundus Images via Pyramid Constraint Networkcited by 18
  11. 2022Identifying Moments of Change from Longitudinal User Textcited by 17
  12. 2024Instruction-Guided Visual Maskingcited by 17
  13. 2024MedSAM-U: Uncertainty-Guided Auto Multi-Prompt Adaptation for Reliable MedSAMcited by 17
  14. 2021Meta-learning with implicit gradients in a few-shot setting for medical image segmentationcited by 15
  15. 2021Deep learning for brain metastasis detection and segmentation in longitudinal MRI datacited by 15
  16. 2022Statistical Properties of the log-cosh Loss Function Used in Machine Learningcited by 15
  17. 2023A survey and taxonomy of loss functions in machine learningcited by 15
  18. 2023A Generalized Surface Loss for Reducing the Hausdorff Distance in Medical Imaging Segmentationcited by 13
  19. 2023Walking Your LiDOG: A Journey Through Multiple Domains for LiDAR Semantic Segmentationcited by 13
  20. 2021Tilted Cross Entropy (TCE): Promoting Fairness in Semantic Segmentationcited by 12
  21. 2023AdaptiveClick: Clicks-aware Transformer with Adaptive Focal Loss for Interactive Image Segmentationcited by 11
  22. 2023U-CE: Uncertainty-aware Cross-Entropy for Semantic Segmentationcited by 11
  23. 2024VLTP: Vision-Language Guided Token Pruning for Task-Oriented Segmentationcited by 11
  24. 2022LaneSNNs: Spiking Neural Networks for Lane Detection on the Loihi Neuromorphic Processorcited by 10
  25. 2024Development of Skip Connection in Deep Neural Networks for Computer Vision and Medical Image Analysis: A Surveycited by 10
  26. 2021A Semantic Segmentation Network for Urban-Scale Building Footprint Extraction Using RGB Satellite Imagerycited by 9
  27. 2022D3FlowSLAM: Self-Supervised Dynamic SLAM with Flow Motion Decomposition and DINO Guidancecited by 9
  28. 2023Clutter Detection and Removal in 3D Scenes with View-Consistent Inpaintingcited by 9
  29. 2024AIO2: Online Correction of Object Labels for Deep Learning with Incomplete Annotation in Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 9
  30. 2021COVID-19 detection from scarce chest x-ray image data using few-shot deep learning approachcited by 8
  31. 2021TATL: Task Agnostic Transfer Learning for Skin Attributes Detectioncited by 8
  32. 2022Graph Neural Networks for Low-Energy Event Classification & Reconstruction in IceCubecited by 8
  33. 2024CromSS: Cross-modal pre-training with noisy labels for remote sensing image segmentationcited by 7
  34. 2021Multimodal PET/CT Tumour Segmentation and Prediction of Progression-Free Survival using a Full-Scale UNet with Attentioncited by 6
  35. 2022Loss as the Inconsistency of a Probabilistic Dependency Graph: Choose Your Model, Not Your Loss Functioncited by 6
  36. 2024HGL: Hierarchical Geometry Learning for Test-time Adaptation in 3D Point Cloud Segmentationcited by 6
  37. 2021On Mathews Correlation Coefficient and Improved Distance Map Loss for Automatic Glacier Calving Front Segmentation in SAR Imagerycited by 5
  38. 2021Quantitative reconstruction of defects in multi-layered bonded composites using fully convolutional network-based ultrasonic inversioncited by 5

50 most cited of 216 All 216 (JSON)