# Learning with Limited Annotations: A Survey on Deep Semi-Supervised Learning for Medical Image Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.14191 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14191/

## Key facts

- Cited by 76 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 104 of its 220 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 104)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [CheXpert: A Large Chest Radiograph Dataset with Uncertainty Labels and Expert Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07031/) (2019)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [Virtual Adversarial Training: A Regularization Method for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03976/) (2017)
- [Skin Lesion Analysis Toward Melanoma Detection 2018: A Challenge Hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03368/) (2019)
- [Deep Mutual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.00384/) (2017)
- [The Medical Segmentation Decathlon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05735/) (2021)
- [ADVENT: Adversarial Entropy Minimization for Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12833/) (2018)
- [Kvasir-SEG: A Segmented Polyp Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07069/) (2019)
- [UNet++: Redesigning Skip Connections to Exploit Multiscale Features in Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05074/) (2019)
- [Understanding the Effective Receptive Field in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04128/) (2017)
- [The Liver Tumor Segmentation Benchmark (LiTS)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04056/) (2019)
- [Regularization With Stochastic Transformations and Perturbations for Deep Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04586/) (2016)
- [Uncertainty-aware Self-ensembling Model for Semi-supervised 3D Left Atrium Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07034/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross-Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09005/) (2020)
- [A large annotated medical image dataset for the development and evaluation of segmentation algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09063/) (2019)
- [CHAOS Challenge -- Combined (CT-MR) Healthy Abdominal Organ Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06535/) (2020)
- [Attention Gated Networks: Learning to Leverage Salient Regions in Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08114/) (2018)
- [Embracing Imperfect Datasets: A Review of Deep Learning Solutions for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10454/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 76)

- [Mamba-UNet: UNet-Like Pure Visual Mamba for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05079/) (2024)
- [Segment Anything Model for Medical Image Segmentation: Current Applications and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03495/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Bidirectional Displacement for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00378/) (2024)
- [Weak-Mamba-UNet: Visual Mamba Makes CNN and ViT Work Better for Scribble-based Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10887/) (2024)
- [Learnable Prompting SAM-induced Knowledge Distillation for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13742/) (2024)
- [Towards Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Medical Image Segmentation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03678/) (2023)
- [SemiSAM: Enhancing Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation via SAM-Assisted Consistency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06316/) (2023)
- [DiffRect: Latent Diffusion Label Rectification for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09918/) (2024)
- [Anatomically-aware Uncertainty for Semi-supervised Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16099/) (2023)
- [Segment Together: A Versatile Paradigm for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11686/) (2023)
- [Semi-supervised Segmentation of Histopathology Images with Noise-Aware Topological Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16447/) (2023)
- [SegAnyPET: Universal Promptable Segmentation from Positron Emission Tomography Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14351/) (2025)
- [A Multispectral Automated Transfer Technique (MATT) for machine-driven image labeling utilizing the Segment Anything Model (SAM)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11413/) (2024)
- [Data efficient deep learning for medical image analysis: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06557/) (2023)
- [Test-time generative augmentation for medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17608/) (2024)
- [PMT: Progressive Mean Teacher via Exploring Temporal Consistency for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05122/) (2024)
- [Uncertainty-aware Cross-training for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09014/) (2025)
- [Weakly Semi-Supervised Detection in Lung Ultrasound Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04463/) (2023)
- [Competitive Ensembling Teacher-Student Framework for Semi-Supervised Left Atrium MRI Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13955/) (2023)
- [MatchSeg: Towards Better Segmentation via Reference Image Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15901/) (2024)
- [Beyond Pixel-Wise Supervision for Medical Image Segmentation: From Traditional Models to Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13239/) (2024)
- [Predictive Accuracy-Based Active Learning for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00452/) (2024)
- [Text-driven Multiplanar Visual Interaction for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12382/) (2025)
- [Towards more precise automatic analysis: a comprehensive survey of deep learning-based multi-organ segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00232/) (2023)
- [Inherent Consistent Learning for Accurate Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14175/) (2023)
- [Segmenting Medical Images with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09189/) (2024)
- [In-context learning for medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13299/) (2024)
- [SSS: Semi-Supervised SAM-2 with Efficient Prompting for Medical Imaging Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08949/) (2025)
- [Multi-organ segmentation: a progressive exploration of learning paradigms under scarce annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03296/) (2023)
- [Adaptive Semi-Supervised Segmentation of Brain Vessels with Ambiguous Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03613/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Medical image segmentation is a fundamental and critical step in many image-guided clinical approaches. Recent success of deep learning-based segmentation methods usually relies on a large amount of labeled data, which is particularly difficult and costly to obtain especially in the medical imaging domain where only experts can provide reliable and accurate annotations. Semi-supervised learning has emerged as an appealing strategy and been widely applied to medical image segmentation tasks to train deep models with limited annotations. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of recently proposed semi-supervised learning methods for medical image segmentation and summarized both the technical novelties and empirical results. Furthermore, we analyze and discuss the limitations and several unsolved problems of existing approaches. We hope this review could inspire the research community to explore solutions for this challenge and further promote the developments in medical image segmentation field.