Recent Progress in Transformer-based Medical Image Analysis
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
The transformer is primarily used in the field of natural language processing. Recently, it has been adopted and shows promise in the computer vision (CV) field. Medical image analysis (MIA), as a critical branch of CV, also greatly benefits from this state-of-the-art technique. In this review, we first recap the core component of the transformer, the attention mechanism, and the detailed structures of the transformer. After that, we depict the recent progress of the transformer in the field of MIA. We organize the applications in a sequence of different tasks, including classification, segmentation, captioning, registration, detection, enhancement, localization, and synthesis. The mainstream classification and segmentation tasks are further divided into eleven medical image modalities. A large number of experiments studied in this review illustrate that the transformer-based method outperforms existing methods through comparisons with multiple evaluation metrics. Finally, we discuss the open challenges and future opportunities in this field. This task-modality review with the latest contents, detailed information, and comprehensive comparison may greatly benefit the broad MIA community.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 154 of its 444 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Aug 2022.
Builds on
154 of 444 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 6; 2025: 1.
9 papers.
- 2023A Comprehensive Evaluation of Large Language Models on Benchmark Biomedical Text Processing Taskscited by 36
- 2023MedAugment: Universal Automatic Data Augmentation Plug-in for Medical Image Analysiscited by 4
- 2024A Comparative Study of CNN, ResNet, and Vision Transformers for Multi-Classification of Chest Diseasescited by 3
- 2024Segmenting Medical Images with Limited Datacited by 3
- 2024Enhancing Skin Disease Classification Leveraging Transformer-based Deep Learning Architectures and Explainable AIcited by 1
- 2024Visual Question Answering in Ophthalmology: A Progressive and Practical Perspectivecited by 1
- 2024Advancing Efficient Brain Tumor Multi-Class Classification -- New Insights from the Vision Mamba Model in Transfer Learningcited by 1
- 2024Adaptive Query Prompting for Multi-Domain Landmark Detectioncited by 0
- 2025MTMed3D: A Multi-Task Transformer-Based Model for 3D Medical Imagingcited by 0
- 2025MTMed3D: A Multi-Task Transformer-Based Model for 3D Medical Imaging15 Nov 2025
- 2024Advancing Efficient Brain Tumor Multi-Class Classification -- New Insights from the Vision Mamba Model in Transfer Learning29 Oct 2024
- 2024Visual Question Answering in Ophthalmology: A Progressive and Practical Perspective22 Oct 2024
- 2024Enhancing Skin Disease Classification Leveraging Transformer-based Deep Learning Architectures and Explainable AI20 Jul 2024
- 2024Segmenting Medical Images with Limited Data12 Jul 2024
- 2024A Comparative Study of CNN, ResNet, and Vision Transformers for Multi-Classification of Chest Diseases31 May 2024
- 2024Adaptive Query Prompting for Multi-Domain Landmark Detection1 Apr 2024
- 2023A Comprehensive Evaluation of Large Language Models on Benchmark Biomedical Text Processing Tasks6 Oct 2023
- 2023MedAugment: Universal Automatic Data Augmentation Plug-in for Medical Image Analysis30 Jun 2023