# Learning to Segment from Noisy Annotations: A Spatial Correction Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.02498 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02498/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [Understanding deep learning requires rethinking generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03530/) (2016)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [Generalized Cross Entropy Loss for Training Deep Neural Networks with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07836/) (2018)
- [A Closer Look at Memorization in Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05394/) (2017)
- [DivideMix: Learning with Noisy Labels as Semi-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07394/) (2020)
- [Making Deep Neural Networks Robust to Label Noise: a Loss Correction Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03683/) (2016)
- [MentorNet: Learning Data-Driven Curriculum for Very Deep Neural Networks on Corrupted Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05055/) (2017)
- [Skin Lesion Analysis Toward Melanoma Detection: A Challenge at the 2017 International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), Hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.05006/) (2017)
- [Identifying the Best Machine Learning Algorithms for Brain Tumor Segmentation, Progression Assessment, and Overall Survival Prediction in the BRATS Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02629/) (2018)
- [Symmetric Cross Entropy for Robust Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06112/) (2019)
- [Early-Learning Regularization Prevents Memorization of Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00151/) (2020)
- [How does Disagreement Help Generalization against Label Corruption?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04215/) (2019)
- [Joint Optimization Framework for Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11364/) (2018)
- [A Probabilistic U-Net for Segmentation of Ambiguous Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05034/) (2018)
- [Normalized Loss Functions for Deep Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13554/) (2020)
- [Using Trusted Data to Train Deep Networks on Labels Corrupted by Severe Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05300/) (2018)
- [Peer Loss Functions: Learning from Noisy Labels without Knowing Noise Rates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03231/) (2019)
- [Learning with Feature-Dependent Label Noise: A Progressive Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07756/) (2021)
- [Curriculum Loss: Robust Learning and Generalization against Label Corruption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10045/) (2019)
- [Error-Bounded Correction of Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10077/) (2020)
- [Adaptive Early-Learning Correction for Segmentation from Noisy Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.03740/) (2021)
- [Open-set Label Noise Can Improve Robustness Against Inherent Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10891/) (2021)
- [Disentangling Human Error from the Ground Truth in Segmentation of Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15963/) (2020)
- [Pick-and-Learn: Automatic Quality Evaluation for Noisy-Labeled Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11835/) (2019)
- [Superpixel-guided Iterative Learning from Noisy Labels for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10100/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [FedA3I: Annotation Quality-Aware Aggregation for Federated Medical Image Segmentation against Heterogeneous Annotation Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12838/) (2023)
- [BadCLM: Backdoor Attack in Clinical Language Models for Electronic Health Records](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05213/) (2024)
- [Improving Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation Across Clinical Sites: A Federated Learning Approach with Noise-Resilient Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16376/) (2023)
- [Towards Fairness under Label Bias in Image Segmentation: Impact, Measurement and Mitigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06891/) (2026)
- [The Accuracy Cost of Weakness: A Theoretical Analysis of Fixed-Segment Weak Labeling for Events in Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09363/) (2025)
- [A Bayesian Approach to Segmentation with Noisy Labels via Spatially Correlated Distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14795/) (2025)
- [From Noisy Labels to Intrinsic Structure: A Geometric-Structural Dual-Guided Framework for Noise-Robust Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02419/) (2025)
- [Segment-to-Act: Label-Noise-Robust Action-Prompted Video Segmentation Towards Embodied Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16677/) (2025)
- [Expert-like Bone Ultrasound Segmentation through Expert-in-the-loop Mask-conditioned Progressive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00473/) (2026)
- [Clean Label Disentangling for Medical Image Segmentation with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16580/) (2023)
- [How Much Data are Enough? Investigating Dataset Requirements for Patch-Based Brain MRI Segmentation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03451/) (2024)
- [Monitoring morphometric drift in lifelong learning segmentation of the spinal cord](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01364/) (2025)
- [Generalizing Abstention for Noise-Robust Learning in Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14039/) (2026)
- [Decoupled Single-Mask Annotation Noise Detection via Cross-Sectional Patch Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.05965/) (2026)
- [Align and Segment: Unsupervised Learning for Building Segmentation From Misaligned Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10841/) (2026)
- [VoxelFix: Post-Hoc Semantic Correction of Completed 3D Voxel Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.05114/) (2026)
- [Prompt and Refinement: Asymmetric Mutual Learning for Infrared Small Target Detection with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05918/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Noisy labels can significantly affect the performance of deep neural networks (DNNs). In medical image segmentation tasks, annotations are error-prone due to the high demand in annotation time and in the annotators' expertise. Existing methods mostly assume noisy labels in different pixels are textiti.i.d. However, segmentation label noise usually has strong spatial correlation and has prominent bias in distribution. In this paper, we propose a novel Markov model for segmentation noisy annotations that encodes both spatial correlation and bias. Further, to mitigate such label noise, we propose a label correction method to recover true label progressively. We provide theoretical guarantees of the correctness of the proposed method. Experiments show that our approach outperforms current state-of-the-art methods on both synthetic and real-world noisy annotations.