mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Structure-Aware Image Segmentation with Homotopy Warping

arXiv 2112.07812 ↗First posted 15 Dec 2021cs.CV cs.CGcited by 24

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Abstract (arXiv)

Besides per-pixel accuracy, topological correctness is also crucial for the segmentation of images with fine-scale structures, e.g., satellite images and biomedical images. In this paper, by leveraging the theory of digital topology, we identify pixels in an image that are critical for topology. By focusing on these critical pixels, we propose a new homotopy warping loss to train deep image segmentation networks for better topological accuracy. To efficiently identify these topologically critical pixels, we propose a new algorithm exploiting the distance transform. The proposed algorithm, as well as the loss function, naturally generalize to different topological structures in both 2D and 3D settings. The proposed loss function helps deep nets achieve better performance in terms of topology-aware metrics, outperforming state-of-the-art structure/topology-aware segmentation methods.

Key facts. Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 24 of its 80 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Dec 2021.

Builds on

24 of 80 references.

References · 24

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
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12 more
  1. 2020clDice -- A Novel Topology-Preserving Loss Function for Tubular Structure Segmentationcited by 294
  2. 2018DeepGlobe 2018: A Challenge to Parse the Earth through Satellite Imagescited by 277
  3. 2019Topology-Preserving Deep Image Segmentationcited by 198
  4. 2018Boundary loss for highly unbalanced segmentationcited by 190
  5. 2019A Topological Loss Function for Deep-Learning based Image Segmentation using Persistent Homologycited by 134
  6. 2019Reducing the Hausdorff Distance in Medical Image Segmentation with Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 116
  7. 2019Boundary-Aware Feature Propagation for Scene Segmentationcited by 107
  8. 2018RoadTracer: Automatic Extraction of Road Networks from Aerial Imagescited by 102
  9. 2017Beyond the Pixel-Wise Loss for Topology-Aware Delineationcited by 83
  10. 2021Topology-Aware Segmentation Using Discrete Morse Theorycited by 75
  11. 2021iCurb: Imitation Learning-based Detection of Road Curbs using Aerial Images for Autonomous Drivingcited by 21
  12. 2017Large Scale Image Segmentation with Structured Loss based Deep Learning for Connectome Reconstructioncited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 4; 2024: 7; 2025: 6; 2026: 5.

24 papers.

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  1. 2023Topology-Aware Uncertainty for Image Segmentationcited by 32
  2. 2022Learning Topological Interactions for Multi-Class Medical Image Segmentationcited by 28
  3. 2022Learning Probabilistic Topological Representations Using Discrete Morse Theorycited by 20
  4. 2024TopoCellGen: Generating Histopathology Cell Topology with a Diffusion Modelcited by 16
  5. 2023Enhancing Modality-Agnostic Representations via Meta-Learning for Brain Tumor Segmentationcited by 14
  6. 2023Semi-supervised Segmentation of Histopathology Images with Noise-Aware Topological Consistencycited by 11
  7. 2024Enhancing Boundary Segmentation for Topological Accuracy with Skeleton-based Methodscited by 9
  8. 2024Efficient Betti Matching Enables Topology-Aware 3D Segmentation via Persistent Homologycited by 8
  9. 2024Spatial Diffusion for Cell Layout Generationcited by 5
  10. 2025Topology Optimization in Medical Image Segmentation with Fast Euler Characteristiccited by 5
  11. 2023GDDS: Pulmonary Bronchioles Segmentation with Group Deep Dense Supervisioncited by 3
  12. 2024Universal Topology Refinement for Medical Image Segmentation with Polynomial Feature Synthesiscited by 3
12 more
  1. 2025Efficient Connectivity-Preserving Instance Segmentation with Supervoxel-Based Loss Functioncited by 3
  2. 2025MATCH: Multi-faceted Adaptive Topo-Consistency for Semi-Supervised Histopathology Segmentationcited by 3
  3. 2024Topology-Preserving Downsampling of Binary Imagescited by 2
  4. 2026Topology-Guaranteed Image Segmentation: Enforcing Connectivity, Genus, and Width Constraintscited by 2
  5. 2025TopoMortar: A dataset to evaluate image segmentation methods focused on topology accuracycited by 1
  6. 2025Disconnect to Connect: A Data Augmentation Method for Improving Topology Accuracy in Image Segmentationcited by 1
  7. 2026Topo-R1: Detecting Topological Anomalies via Vision-Language Modelscited by 1
  8. 2026Towards High-Quality Image Segmentation: Improving Topology Accuracy by Penalizing Neighbor Pixelscited by 1
  9. 2024Conformable Convolution for Topologically Aware Learning of Complex Anatomical Structurescited by 0
  10. 2025ContextLoss: Context Information for Topology-Preserving Segmentationcited by 0
  11. 2026SAMSEM -- A Generic and Scalable Approach for IC Metal Line Segmentationcited by 0
  12. 2026Sparse cubical complexes for efficient topology-preservation in image datacited by 0