Out-of-distribution Detection in Medical Image Analysis: A survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Computer-aided diagnostics has benefited from the development of deep learning-based computer vision techniques in these years. Traditional supervised deep learning methods assume that the test sample is drawn from the identical distribution as the training data. However, it is possible to encounter out-of-distribution samples in real-world clinical scenarios, which may cause silent failure in deep learning-based medical image analysis tasks. Recently, research has explored various out-of-distribution (OOD) detection situations and techniques to enable a trustworthy medical AI system. In this survey, we systematically review the recent advances in OOD detection in medical image analysis. We first explore several factors that may cause a distributional shift when using a deep-learning-based model in clinic scenarios, with three different types of distributional shift well defined on top of these factors. Then a framework is suggested to categorize and feature existing solutions, while the previous studies are reviewed based on the methodology taxonomy. Our discussion also includes evaluation protocols and metrics, as well as the challenge and a research direction lack of exploration.
Key facts. Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 68 of its 107 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Apr 2024.
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 11; 2026: 9.
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- 2024Generalized Out-of-Distribution Detection and Beyond in Vision Language Model Era: A Surveycited by 36
- 2025OpenMIBOOD: Open Medical Imaging Benchmarks for Out-Of-Distribution Detectioncited by 14
- 2025NOVA: A Benchmark for Anomaly Localization and Clinical Reasoning in Brain MRIcited by 13
- 2025CADRef: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Class-Aware Decoupled Relative Feature Leveragingcited by 9
- 2024Uncertainty-Aware Out-of-Distribution Detection with Gaussian Processescited by 6
- 2025Recent Advances in Out-of-Distribution Detection with CLIP-Like Models: A Surveycited by 6
- 2025A Chain-of-thought Reasoning Breast Ultrasound Dataset Covering All Histopathology Categoriescited by 6
- 2025Delving into Out-of-Distribution Detection with Medical Vision-Language Modelscited by 5
- 2025NERO: Explainable Out-of-Distribution Detection with Neuron-level Relevancecited by 3
- 2025Safeguarding Generative AI Applications in Preclinical Imaging through Hybrid Anomaly Detectioncited by 1
- 2025Uncovering Overconfident Failures in CXR Models via Augmentation-Sensitivity Risk Scoringcited by 1
- 2026MahaVar: OOD Detection via Class-wise Mahalanobis Distance Variance under Neural Collapsecited by 1
10 more
- 2025Influence of Classification Task and Distribution Shift Type on OOD Detection in Fetal Ultrasoundcited by 0
- 2025Noise Injection: Improving Out-of-Distribution Generalization for Limited Size Datasetscited by 0
- 2026Ranked Activation Shift for Post-Hoc Out-of-Distribution Detectioncited by 0
- 2026MaRS: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Mahalanobis Residual Scoringcited by 0
- 2026MedGuards: Multi-Agent System for Reliable Medical Error Detection and Correctioncited by 0
- 2026MMIR-TCM: Memory-Integrated Multimodal Inference and Retrieval for TCM Clinical Decision Supportcited by 0
- 2026Cross-Contextual Vision-Language Adaptation with LoRA for Personalized Severe Adverse Event Detection in Clinical Wound Monitoringcited by 0
- 2026VIDS-Seg: Towards Reliable Uncertainty Quantification in Pediatric Cardiac Ultrasound Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026Layer Selection in VLMs for Zero-Shot OOD Detection via Multi-Resolution Entropy Estimationcited by 0
- 2026Local Sparsity Enables Unsupervised LLM Safety Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Local Sparsity Enables Unsupervised LLM Safety Detection17 Sep 2026
- 2026Layer Selection in VLMs for Zero-Shot OOD Detection via Multi-Resolution Entropy Estimation8 Sep 2026
- 2026VIDS-Seg: Towards Reliable Uncertainty Quantification in Pediatric Cardiac Ultrasound Segmentation11 Aug 2026
- 2026Cross-Contextual Vision-Language Adaptation with LoRA for Personalized Severe Adverse Event Detection in Clinical Wound Monitoring6 Jul 2026
- 2026MMIR-TCM: Memory-Integrated Multimodal Inference and Retrieval for TCM Clinical Decision Support2 Jul 2026
- 2026MedGuards: Multi-Agent System for Reliable Medical Error Detection and Correction24 Jun 2026
- 2026MaRS: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Mahalanobis Residual Scoring21 Jun 2026
- 2026MahaVar: OOD Detection via Class-wise Mahalanobis Distance Variance under Neural Collapse14 May 2026
- 2026Ranked Activation Shift for Post-Hoc Out-of-Distribution Detection27 Mar 2026
- 2025Noise Injection: Improving Out-of-Distribution Generalization for Limited Size Datasets5 Nov 2025
- 2025Uncovering Overconfident Failures in CXR Models via Augmentation-Sensitivity Risk Scoring2 Oct 2025
- 2025Influence of Classification Task and Distribution Shift Type on OOD Detection in Fetal Ultrasound22 Sep 2025
10 more
- 2025A Chain-of-thought Reasoning Breast Ultrasound Dataset Covering All Histopathology Categories21 Sep 2025
- 2025Safeguarding Generative AI Applications in Preclinical Imaging through Hybrid Anomaly Detection11 Aug 2025
- 2025NERO: Explainable Out-of-Distribution Detection with Neuron-level Relevance18 Jun 2025
- 2025NOVA: A Benchmark for Anomaly Localization and Clinical Reasoning in Brain MRI20 May 2025
- 2025Recent Advances in Out-of-Distribution Detection with CLIP-Like Models: A Survey5 May 2025
- 2025OpenMIBOOD: Open Medical Imaging Benchmarks for Out-Of-Distribution Detection20 Mar 2025
- 2025Delving into Out-of-Distribution Detection with Medical Vision-Language Models2 Mar 2025
- 2025CADRef: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Class-Aware Decoupled Relative Feature Leveraging1 Mar 2025
- 2024Uncertainty-Aware Out-of-Distribution Detection with Gaussian Processes30 Dec 2024
- 2024Generalized Out-of-Distribution Detection and Beyond in Vision Language Model Era: A Survey31 Jul 2024
- 2026Local Sparsity Enables Unsupervised LLM Safety Detectioncited by 0
- 2026Local Sparsity Enables Unsupervised LLM Safety Detection17 Sep 2026
- 2025OpenMIBOOD: Open Medical Imaging Benchmarks for Out-Of-Distribution Detectioncited by 14
- 2025CADRef: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Class-Aware Decoupled Relative Feature Leveragingcited by 9
- 2024Uncertainty-Aware Out-of-Distribution Detection with Gaussian Processescited by 6
- 2025Recent Advances in Out-of-Distribution Detection with CLIP-Like Models: A Surveycited by 6
- 2025A Chain-of-thought Reasoning Breast Ultrasound Dataset Covering All Histopathology Categoriescited by 6
- 2025NERO: Explainable Out-of-Distribution Detection with Neuron-level Relevancecited by 3
- 2025Safeguarding Generative AI Applications in Preclinical Imaging through Hybrid Anomaly Detectioncited by 1
- 2025Uncovering Overconfident Failures in CXR Models via Augmentation-Sensitivity Risk Scoringcited by 1
- 2026MahaVar: OOD Detection via Class-wise Mahalanobis Distance Variance under Neural Collapsecited by 1
- 2025Influence of Classification Task and Distribution Shift Type on OOD Detection in Fetal Ultrasoundcited by 0
- 2025Noise Injection: Improving Out-of-Distribution Generalization for Limited Size Datasetscited by 0
- 2026Ranked Activation Shift for Post-Hoc Out-of-Distribution Detectioncited by 0
12 most cited of 17 All 17 (JSON)
- 2026Layer Selection in VLMs for Zero-Shot OOD Detection via Multi-Resolution Entropy Estimation8 Sep 2026
- 2026VIDS-Seg: Towards Reliable Uncertainty Quantification in Pediatric Cardiac Ultrasound Segmentation11 Aug 2026
- 2026Cross-Contextual Vision-Language Adaptation with LoRA for Personalized Severe Adverse Event Detection in Clinical Wound Monitoring6 Jul 2026
- 2026MMIR-TCM: Memory-Integrated Multimodal Inference and Retrieval for TCM Clinical Decision Support2 Jul 2026
- 2026MaRS: Robust Out-of-Distribution Detection via Mahalanobis Residual Scoring21 Jun 2026
- 2026MahaVar: OOD Detection via Class-wise Mahalanobis Distance Variance under Neural Collapse14 May 2026
- 2026Ranked Activation Shift for Post-Hoc Out-of-Distribution Detection27 Mar 2026
- 2025Noise Injection: Improving Out-of-Distribution Generalization for Limited Size Datasets5 Nov 2025
- 2025Uncovering Overconfident Failures in CXR Models via Augmentation-Sensitivity Risk Scoring2 Oct 2025
- 2025Influence of Classification Task and Distribution Shift Type on OOD Detection in Fetal Ultrasound22 Sep 2025
- 2025A Chain-of-thought Reasoning Breast Ultrasound Dataset Covering All Histopathology Categories21 Sep 2025
- 2025Safeguarding Generative AI Applications in Preclinical Imaging through Hybrid Anomaly Detection11 Aug 2025
12 newest of 17 All 17 (JSON)