Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Medical Image Analysis: The Missed Opportunity
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Abstract (arXiv)
Foundation models have significantly advanced medical image analysis through the pre-train fine-tune paradigm. Among various fine-tuning algorithms, Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) is increasingly utilized for knowledge transfer across diverse tasks, including vision-language and text-to-image generation. However, its application in medical image analysis is relatively unexplored due to the lack of a structured benchmark for evaluating PEFT methods. This study fills this gap by evaluating 17 distinct PEFT algorithms across convolutional and transformer-based networks on image classification and text-to-image generation tasks using six medical datasets of varying size, modality, and complexity. Through a battery of over 700 controlled experiments, our findings demonstrate PEFT's effectiveness, particularly in low data regimes common in medical imaging, with performance gains of up to 22% in discriminative and generative tasks. These recommendations can assist the community in incorporating PEFT into their workflows and facilitate fair comparisons of future PEFT methods, ensuring alignment with advancements in other areas of machine learning and AI.
Key facts. Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 58 of its 97 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 May 2023.
Builds on
58 of 97 references.
References · 58
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50 most cited of 58 All 58 (JSON)
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- 2026Toward Clinically Ready Foundation Models in Medical Image Analysis: Adaptation Mechanisms and Deployment Trade-offs15 Mar 2026
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- 2025Federated Fine-tuning of SAM-Med3D for MRI-based Dementia Classification29 Aug 2025
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- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusion28 Feb 2025
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- 2024LQ-Adapter: ViT-Adapter with Learnable Queries for Gallbladder Cancer Detection from Ultrasound Image30 Nov 2024
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- 2024SURE-VQA: Systematic Understanding of Robustness Evaluation in Medical VQA Tasks29 Nov 2024
- 2024Capacity Control is an Effective Memorization Mitigation Mechanism in Text-Conditional Diffusion Models29 Oct 2024
- 2024LoRTA: Low Rank Tensor Adaptation of Large Language Models5 Oct 2024
- 2024Beyond LoRA: Exploring Efficient Fine-Tuning Techniques for Time Series Foundational Models17 Sep 2024
- 2024A Novel Hybrid Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning Approach for Hippocampus Segmentation and Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis2 Sep 2024
- 2024Pre-training Everywhere: Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Medical Image Analysis via Target Parameter Pre-training27 Aug 2024
- 2024SeLoRA: Self-Expanding Low-Rank Adaptation of Latent Diffusion Model for Medical Image Synthesis13 Aug 2024
- 2024BMFT: Achieving Fairness via Bias-based Weight Masking Fine-tuning13 Aug 2024
- 2024Boosting Memory Efficiency in Transfer Learning for High-Resolution Medical Image Classification5 Aug 2024
- 2024Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning for Multi-scanner PET to PET Reconstruction10 Jul 2024
- 2024Embedded Visual Prompt Tuning1 Jul 2024
- 2024MemControl: Mitigating Memorization in Diffusion Models via Automated Parameter Selection29 May 2024
- 2024Sparsity- and Hybridity-Inspired Visual Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Medical Diagnosis28 May 2024
- 2024Low-Rank Adaptation of Time Series Foundational Models for Out-of-Domain Modality Forecasting16 May 2024
- 2024Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning: A Comprehensive Analysis Across Applications21 Apr 2024
- 2024How to build the best medical image segmentation algorithm using foundation models: a comprehensive empirical study with Segment Anything Model15 Apr 2024
- 2024Fine-grained Prompt Tuning: A Parameter and Memory Efficient Transfer Learning Method for High-resolution Medical Image Classification12 Mar 2024
- 2024ConvLoRA and AdaBN based Domain Adaptation via Self-Training7 Feb 2024
- 2024Less Could Be Better: Parameter-efficient Fine-tuning Advances Medical Vision Foundation Models22 Jan 2024
- 2024Data-Centric Foundation Models in Computational Healthcare: A Survey4 Jan 2024
- 2023Evaluating General Purpose Vision Foundation Models for Medical Image Analysis: An Experimental Study of DINOv2 on Radiology Benchmarks4 Dec 2023
50 newest of 54 All 54 (JSON)
- 2023Improving Tuning-Free Real Image Editing with Proximal Guidancecited by 87
- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusioncited by 17
- 2024MemControl: Mitigating Memorization in Diffusion Models via Automated Parameter Selectioncited by 3
- 2024SeLoRA: Self-Expanding Low-Rank Adaptation of Latent Diffusion Model for Medical Image Synthesiscited by 2
- 2024Capacity Control is an Effective Memorization Mitigation Mechanism in Text-Conditional Diffusion Modelscited by 2
- 2025The Devil is in the Prompts: De-Identification Traces Enhance Memorization Risks in Synthetic Chest X-Ray Generationcited by 2
- 2025PRISM: High-Resolution & Precise Counterfactual Medical Image Generation using Language-guided Stable Diffusion28 Feb 2025
- 2025The Devil is in the Prompts: De-Identification Traces Enhance Memorization Risks in Synthetic Chest X-Ray Generation11 Feb 2025
- 2024Capacity Control is an Effective Memorization Mitigation Mechanism in Text-Conditional Diffusion Models29 Oct 2024
- 2024SeLoRA: Self-Expanding Low-Rank Adaptation of Latent Diffusion Model for Medical Image Synthesis13 Aug 2024
- 2024MemControl: Mitigating Memorization in Diffusion Models via Automated Parameter Selection29 May 2024
- 2023Improving Tuning-Free Real Image Editing with Proximal Guidance8 Jun 2023
- 2025RAU: Reference-based Anatomical Understanding with Vision Language Modelscited by 3
- 2026SkinCLIP-VL: Consistency-Aware Vision-Language Learning for Multimodal Skin Cancer Diagnosiscited by 3
- 2025How to make Medical AI Systems safer? Simulating Vulnerabilities, and Threats in Multimodal Medical RAG Systemcited by 2
- 2024SURE-VQA: Systematic Understanding of Robustness Evaluation in Medical VQA Taskscited by 1
- 2026Lumen: Parameter-Efficient Alignment of Pretrained Vision and Language Encoders for Zero-Shot Computational Pathologycited by 0
- 2026Lumen: Parameter-Efficient Alignment of Pretrained Vision and Language Encoders for Zero-Shot Computational Pathology15 Sep 2026
- 2026SkinCLIP-VL: Consistency-Aware Vision-Language Learning for Multimodal Skin Cancer Diagnosis22 Mar 2026
- 2025RAU: Reference-based Anatomical Understanding with Vision Language Models26 Sep 2025
- 2025How to make Medical AI Systems safer? Simulating Vulnerabilities, and Threats in Multimodal Medical RAG System24 Aug 2025
- 2024SURE-VQA: Systematic Understanding of Robustness Evaluation in Medical VQA Tasks29 Nov 2024
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- 2024How to build the best medical image segmentation algorithm using foundation models: a comprehensive empirical study with Segment Anything Modelcited by 32
- 2023Evaluating General Purpose Vision Foundation Models for Medical Image Analysis: An Experimental Study of DINOv2 on Radiology Benchmarkscited by 30
- 2024Data-Centric Foundation Models in Computational Healthcare: A Surveycited by 27
- 2024Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning: A Comprehensive Analysis Across Applicationscited by 25
- 2023SAM-PARSER: Fine-tuning SAM Efficiently by Parameter Space Reconstructioncited by 23
- 2023FairTune: Optimizing Parameter Efficient Fine Tuning for Fairness in Medical Image Analysiscited by 23
- 2024Low-Rank Adaptation of Time Series Foundational Models for Out-of-Domain Modality Forecastingcited by 18
- 2024Less Could Be Better: Parameter-efficient Fine-tuning Advances Medical Vision Foundation Modelscited by 17
- 2024ConvLoRA and AdaBN based Domain Adaptation via Self-Trainingcited by 10
- 2024Beyond LoRA: Exploring Efficient Fine-Tuning Techniques for Time Series Foundational Modelscited by 10
- 2024Fine-grained Prompt Tuning: A Parameter and Memory Efficient Transfer Learning Method for High-resolution Medical Image Classificationcited by 7
12 most cited of 42 All 42 (JSON)
- 2026When Adaptation Hurts: Connecting Representational Drift to OOD Failures in MedSAM Fine-Tuning21 Aug 2026
- 2026Transferable Low-Rank Convolutional Bases for Onboarding Unseen Medical Imaging Modalities18 Jul 2026
- 2026Parameter-Efficient CT Reconstruction via Deep Graph Laplacian Regularization25 May 2026
- 2026SMFormer: Empowering Self-supervised Stereo Matching via Foundation Models and Data Augmentation11 Apr 2026
- 2026Toward Clinically Ready Foundation Models in Medical Image Analysis: Adaptation Mechanisms and Deployment Trade-offs15 Mar 2026
- 20261%>100%: High-Efficiency Visual Adapter with Complex Linear Projection Optimization11 Feb 2026
- 2025Adaptation of Foundation Models for Medical Image Analysis: Strategies, Challenges, and Future Directions3 Nov 2025
- 2025Federated Fine-tuning of SAM-Med3D for MRI-based Dementia Classification29 Aug 2025
- 2025Swin-TUNA : A Novel PEFT Approach for Accurate Food Image Segmentation23 Jul 2025
- 2025BleedOrigin: Dynamic Bleeding Source Localization in Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection via Dual-Stage Detection and Tracking20 Jul 2025
- 2025WaRA: Wavelet Low-Rank Adaptation for Medical Image Classification25 Jun 2025
- 2025Benchmarking Foundation Models and Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Prognosis Prediction in Medical Imaging23 Jun 2025
12 newest of 42 All 42 (JSON)