# Pseudo-label refinement using superpixels for semi-supervised brain tumour segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08589 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08589/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Oct 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Identifying the Best Machine Learning Algorithms for Brain Tumor Segmentation, Progression Assessment, and Overall Survival Prediction in the BRATS Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02629/) (2018)
- [nnU-Net for Brain Tumor Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00848/) (2020)
- [3DIoUMatch: Leveraging IoU Prediction for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04355/) (2020)
- [Naive-Student: Leveraging Semi-Supervised Learning in Video Sequences for Urban Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10266/) (2020)
- [Adaptive strategy for superpixel-based region-growing image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06541/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Learning with Limited Annotations: A Survey on Deep Semi-Supervised Learning for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14191/) (2022)
- [SemiSAM: Enhancing Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation via SAM-Assisted Consistency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06316/) (2023)
- [SamDSK: Combining Segment Anything Model with Domain-Specific Knowledge for Semi-Supervised Learning in Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13759/) (2023)
- [Semi-supervised Segmentation of Histopathology Images with Noise-Aware Topological Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16447/) (2023)
- [SDC-UDA: Volumetric Unsupervised Domain Adaptation Framework for Slice-Direction Continuous Cross-Modality Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11012/) (2023)
- [VQ-Seg: Vector-Quantized Token Perturbation for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10124/) (2026)
- [UniSemAlign: Text-Prototype Alignment with a Foundation Encoder for Semi-Supervised Histopathology Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09169/) (2026)
- [Online pseudo labeling for polyp segmentation with momentum networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14599/) (2022)
- [Self-training with dual uncertainty for semi-supervised medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04441/) (2023)
- [UniMOS: A Universal Framework For Multi-Organ Segmentation Over Label-Constrained Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10251/) (2023)
- [Guidelines for Cerebrovascular Segmentation: Managing Imperfect Annotations in the context of Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01765/) (2024)
- [SP 3 : Superpixel-propagated pseudo-label learning for weakly semi-supervised medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11636/) (2024)
- [Pairwise Similarity Regularization for Semi-supervised Graph Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12800/) (2025)
- [Dual-Scale Volume Priors with Wasserstein-Based Consistency for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04273/) (2025)
- [Are We Overconfident in Models and Results for Semi-Supervised 3D Medical Image Segmentation?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25561/) (2026)
- [Bi-Level Collaborative Learning for Few-Shot Scribble-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25432/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Training neural networks using limited annotations is an important problem in the medical domain. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) typically require large, annotated datasets to achieve acceptable performance which, in the medical domain, are especially difficult to obtain as they require significant time from expert radiologists. Semi-supervised learning aims to overcome this problem by learning segmentations with very little annotated data, whilst exploiting large amounts of unlabelled data. However, the best-known technique, which utilises inferred pseudo-labels, is vulnerable to inaccurate pseudo-labels degrading the performance. We propose a framework based on superpixels - meaningful clusters of adjacent pixels - to improve the accuracy of the pseudo labels and address this issue. Our framework combines superpixels with semi-supervised learning, refining the pseudo-labels during training using the features and edges of the superpixel maps. This method is evaluated on a multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset for the task of brain tumour region segmentation. Our method demonstrates improved performance over the standard semi-supervised pseudo-labelling baseline when there is a reduced annotator burden and only 5 annotated patients are available. We report DSC=0.824 and DSC=0.707 for the test set whole tumour and tumour core regions respectively.