# DAWN: Domain-Adaptive Weakly Supervised Nuclei Segmentation via Cross-Task Interactions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.14956 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14956/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 46 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 46)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [CyCADA: Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03213/) (2017)
- [Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00868/) (2018)
- [HoVer-Net: Simultaneous Segmentation and Classification of Nuclei in Multi-Tissue Histology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06499/) (2018)
- [Cross-Domain Weakly-Supervised Object Detection through Progressive Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11365/) (2018)
- [Source-Free Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16372/) (2021)
- [Grad-CAM: Why did you say that?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07450/) (2016)
- [Weakly-Supervised Semantic Segmentation via Sub-category Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01183/) (2020)
- [Diversify and Match: A Domain Adaptive Representation Learning Paradigm for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05396/) (2019)
- [Synergistic Image and Feature Adaptation: Towards Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08211/) (2019)
- [PanNuke Dataset Extension, Insights and Baselines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10778/) (2020)
- [DUNet: A deformable network for retinal vessel segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01206/) (2018)
- [Lizard: A Large-Scale Dataset for Colonic Nuclear Instance Segmentation and Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11195/) (2021)
- [Reliability Does Matter: An End-to-End Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08039/) (2019)
- [DCAN: Deep Contour-Aware Networks for Accurate Gland Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02677/) (2016)
- [Weakly Supervised Instance Segmentation using Class Peak Response](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00880/) (2018)
- [Micro-Net: A unified model for segmentation of various objects in microscopy images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08145/) (2018)
- [Weakly Supervised Deep Nuclei Segmentation Using Partial Points Annotation in Histopathology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05448/) (2020)
- [CryoNuSeg: A Dataset for Nuclei Instance Segmentation of Cryosectioned H&E-Stained Histological Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00442/) (2021)
- [Multi-Source Domain Adaptation with Collaborative Learning for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04717/) (2021)
- [Source-Free Open Compound Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03422/) (2021)
- [RA-UNet: A hybrid deep attention-aware network to extract liver and tumor in CT scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01328/) (2018)
- [Unsupervised Instance Segmentation in Microscopy Images via Panoptic Domain Adaptation and Task Re-weighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02066/) (2020)
- [CoNIC Challenge: Pushing the Frontiers of Nuclear Detection, Segmentation, Classification and Counting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06274/) (2023)
- [BoxTeacher: Exploring High-Quality Pseudo Labels for Weakly Supervised Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05174/) (2022)
- [Count-ception: Counting by Fully Convolutional Redundant Counting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.08710/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [MedAgent-Pro: Towards Evidence-based Multi-modal Medical Diagnosis via Reasoning Agentic Workflow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18968/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Pseudo Label Optimization in Point-Supervised Nuclei Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16427/) (2024)
- [Spatio-Temporal Representation Decoupling and Enhancement for Federated Instrument Segmentation in Surgical Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23759/) (2025)
- [Category Prompt Mamba Network for Nuclei Segmentation and Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10422/) (2025)
- [The Four Color Theorem for Cell Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09724/) (2025)
- [PARF-Net: integrating pixel-wise adaptive receptive fields into hybrid Transformer-CNN network for medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02882/) (2025)
- [Instance-Aware Pseudo-Labeling and Class-Focused Contrastive Learning for Weakly Supervised Domain Adaptive Segmentation of Electron Microscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16450/) (2025)
- [LG-NuSegHop: A Local-to-Global Self-Supervised Pipeline For Nuclei Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04892/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Weakly supervised segmentation methods have gained significant attention due to their ability to reduce the reliance on costly pixel-level annotations during model training. However, the current weakly supervised nuclei segmentation approaches typically follow a two-stage pseudo-label generation and network training process. The performance of the nuclei segmentation heavily relies on the quality of the generated pseudo-labels, thereby limiting its effectiveness. This paper introduces a novel domain-adaptive weakly supervised nuclei segmentation framework using cross-task interaction strategies to overcome the challenge of pseudo-label generation. Specifically, we utilize weakly annotated data to train an auxiliary detection task, which assists the domain adaptation of the segmentation network. To enhance the efficiency of domain adaptation, we design a consistent feature constraint module integrating prior knowledge from the source domain. Furthermore, we develop pseudo-label optimization and interactive training methods to improve the domain transfer capability. To validate the effectiveness of our proposed method, we conduct extensive comparative and ablation experiments on six datasets. The results demonstrate the superiority of our approach over existing weakly supervised approaches. Remarkably, our method achieves comparable or even better performance than fully supervised methods. Our code will be released in https://github.com/zhangye-zoe/DAWN.