# Multi-task Learning for Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) Vessel Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.02266 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02266/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 13 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [Multi-Task Learning Using Uncertainty to Weigh Losses for Scene Geometry and Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07115/) (2017)
- [ROSE: A Retinal OCT-Angiography Vessel Segmentation Dataset and New Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05201/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning for Multi-Task Medical Image Segmentation in Multiple Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03379/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) is a non-invasive imaging technique that provides high-resolution cross-sectional images of the retina, which are useful for diagnosing and monitoring various retinal diseases. However, manual segmentation of OCTA images is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, which motivates the development of automated segmentation methods. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-task learning method for OCTA segmentation, called OCTA-MTL, that leverages an image-to-DT (Distance Transform) branch and an adaptive loss combination strategy. The image-to-DT branch predicts the distance from each vessel voxel to the vessel surface, which can provide useful shape prior and boundary information for the segmentation task. The adaptive loss combination strategy dynamically adjusts the loss weights according to the inverse of the average loss values of each task, to balance the learning process and avoid the dominance of one task over the other. We evaluate our method on the ROSE-2 dataset its superiority in terms of segmentation performance against two baseline methods: a single-task segmentation method and a multi-task segmentation method with a fixed loss combination.