# The revenge of BiSeNet: Efficient Multi-Task Image Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09570 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09570/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Masked-attention Mask Transformer for Universal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01527/) (2021)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [Per-Pixel Classification is Not All You Need for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06278/) (2021)
- [Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00868/) (2018)
- [BiSeNet: Bilateral Segmentation Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00897/) (2018)
- [Panoptic-DeepLab](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.04751/) (2019)
- [BiSeNet V2: Bilateral Network with Guided Aggregation for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02147/) (2020)
- [SOLO: Segmenting Objects by Locations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04488/) (2019)
- [UPSNet: A Unified Panoptic Segmentation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.03784/) (2019)
- [Rethinking BiSeNet For Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13188/) (2021)
- [Deep Dual-resolution Networks for Real-time and Accurate Semantic Segmentation of Road Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06085/) (2021)
- [PIDNet: A Real-time Semantic Segmentation Network Inspired by PID Controllers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02066/) (2022)
- [You Only Segment Once: Towards Real-Time Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14651/) (2023)
- [PEM: Prototype-based Efficient MaskFormer for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19422/) (2024)
- [PP-LiteSeg: A Superior Real-Time Semantic Segmentation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02681/) (2022)
- [Real-Time Panoptic Segmentation from Dense Detections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01202/) (2019)
- [Bidirectional Graph Reasoning Network for Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06272/) (2020)
- [Fast Panoptic Segmentation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03892/) (2019)
- [kMaX-DeepLab: k-means Mask Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04044/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Progressive Token Length Scaling in Transformer Encoders for Efficient Universal Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14657/) (2024)
- [PrAda: Few-Shot Visual Adaptation for Text-Prompted Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19623/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advancements in image segmentation have focused on enhancing the efficiency of the models to meet the demands of real-time applications, especially on edge devices. However, existing research has primarily concentrated on single-task settings, especially on semantic segmentation, leading to redundant efforts and specialized architectures for different tasks. To address this limitation, we propose a novel architecture for efficient multi-task image segmentation, capable of handling various segmentation tasks without sacrificing efficiency or accuracy. We introduce BiSeNetFormer, that leverages the efficiency of two-stream semantic segmentation architectures and it extends them into a mask classification framework. Our approach maintains the efficient spatial and context paths to capture detailed and semantic information, respectively, while leveraging an efficient transformed-based segmentation head that computes the binary masks and class probabilities. By seamlessly supporting multiple tasks, namely semantic and panoptic segmentation, BiSeNetFormer offers a versatile solution for multi-task segmentation. We evaluate our approach on popular datasets, Cityscapes and ADE20K, demonstrating impressive inference speeds while maintaining competitive accuracy compared to state-of-the-art architectures. Our results indicate that BiSeNetFormer represents a significant advancement towards fast, efficient, and multi-task segmentation networks, bridging the gap between model efficiency and task adaptability.