# IterMiUnet: A lightweight architecture for automatic blood vessel segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.01485 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01485/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Aug 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [BoxSup: Exploiting Bounding Boxes to Supervise Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.01640/) (2015)
- [Recurrent Residual Convolutional Neural Network based on U-Net (R2U-Net) for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06955/) (2018)
- [DUNet: A deformable network for retinal vessel segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01206/) (2018)
- [IterNet: Retinal Image Segmentation Utilizing Structural Redundancy in Vessel Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05763/) (2019)
- [Retinal vessel segmentation based on Fully Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07110/) (2018)
- [A Hierarchical Image Matting Model for Blood Vessel Segmentation in Fundus images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.00892/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [FusionLungNet: Multi-scale Fusion Convolution with Refinement Network for Lung CT Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15812/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The automatic segmentation of blood vessels in fundus images can help analyze the condition of retinal vasculature, which is crucial for identifying various systemic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, etc. Despite the success of Deep Learning-based models in this segmentation task, most of them are heavily parametrized and thus have limited use in practical applications. This paper proposes IterMiUnet, a new lightweight convolution-based segmentation model that requires significantly fewer parameters and yet delivers performance similar to existing models. The model makes use of the excellent segmentation capabilities of Iternet architecture but overcomes its heavily parametrized nature by incorporating the encoder-decoder structure of MiUnet model within it. Thus, the new model reduces parameters without any compromise with the network's depth, which is necessary to learn abstract hierarchical concepts in deep models. This lightweight segmentation model speeds up training and inference time and is potentially helpful in the medical domain where data is scarce and, therefore, heavily parametrized models tend to overfit. The proposed model was evaluated on three publicly available datasets: DRIVE, STARE, and CHASE-DB1. Further cross-training and inter-rater variability evaluations have also been performed. The proposed model has a lot of potential to be utilized as a tool for the early diagnosis of many diseases.