# Comparative Evaluation of 3D and 2D Deep Learning Techniques for Semantic Segmentation in CT Scans

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07612 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07612/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jan 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Xception: Deep Learning with Depthwise Separable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02357/) (2016)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Network In Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.4400/) (2013)
- [Low Dose CT Image Denoising Using a Generative Adversarial Network with Wasserstein Distance and Perceptual Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.00961/) (2017)
- [Automatic Liver and Tumor Segmentation of CT and MRI Volumes using Cascaded Fully Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05970/) (2017)
- [A Light CNN for detecting COVID-19 from CT scans of the chest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12837/) (2020)
- [Deep Neural Networks for Anatomical Brain Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02445/) (2015)
- [VoxResNet: Deep Voxelwise Residual Networks for Volumetric Brain Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05895/) (2016)
- [Practical Window Setting Optimization for Medical Image Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00572/) (2018)
- [Deep convolutional networks for pancreas segmentation in CT imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.03967/) (2015)
- [The use of deep learning in image segmentation, classification and detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.09612/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Towards Generalisable Foundation Models for Brain MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23415/) (2025)
- [Deep learning for automatic head and neck lymph node level delineation provides expert-level accuracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.13224/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image segmentation plays a pivotal role in several medical-imaging applications by assisting the segmentation of the regions of interest. Deep learning-based approaches have been widely adopted for semantic segmentation of medical data. In recent years, in addition to 2D deep learning architectures, 3D architectures have been employed as the predictive algorithms for 3D medical image data. In this paper, we propose a 3D stack-based deep learning technique for segmenting manifestations of consolidation and ground-glass opacities in 3D Computed Tomography (CT) scans. We also present a comparison based on the segmentation results, the contextual information retained, and the inference time between this 3D technique and a traditional 2D deep learning technique. We also define the area-plot, which represents the peculiar pattern observed in the slice-wise areas of the pathology regions predicted by these deep learning models. In our exhaustive evaluation, 3D technique performs better than the 2D technique for the segmentation of CT scans. We get dice scores of 79% and 73% for the 3D and the 2D techniques respectively. The 3D technique results in a 5X reduction in the inference time compared to the 2D technique. Results also show that the area-plots predicted by the 3D model are more similar to the ground truth than those predicted by the 2D model. We also show how increasing the amount of contextual information retained during the training can improve the 3D model's performance.