Medical SAM 2: Segment medical images as video via Segment Anything Model 2
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Abstract (arXiv)
Medical image segmentation plays a pivotal role in clinical diagnostics and treatment planning, yet existing models often face challenges in generalization and in handling both 2D and 3D data uniformly. In this paper, we introduce Medical SAM 2 (MedSAM-2), a generalized auto-tracking model for universal 2D and 3D medical image segmentation. The core concept is to leverage the Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM2) pipeline to treat all 2D and 3D medical segmentation tasks as a video object tracking problem. To put it into practice, we propose a novel self-sorting memory bank mechanism that dynamically selects informative embeddings based on confidence and dissimilarity, regardless of temporal order. This mechanism not only significantly improves performance in 3D medical image segmentation but also unlocks a One-Prompt Segmentation capability for 2D images, allowing segmentation across multiple images from a single prompt without temporal relationships. We evaluated MedSAM-2 on five 2D tasks and nine 3D tasks, including white blood cells, optic cups, retinal vessels, mandibles, coronary arteries, kidney tumors, liver tumors, breast cancer, nasopharynx cancer, vestibular schwannoma, mediastinal lymph nodules, cerebral artery, inferior alveolar nerve, and abdominal organs, comparing it against state-of-the-art (SOTA) models in task-tailored, general and interactive segmentation settings. Our findings demonstrate that MedSAM-2 surpasses a wide range of existing models and updates new SOTA on several benchmarks. The code is released on the project page: https://supermedintel.github.io/Medical-SAM2/.
Key facts. Cited by 151 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2024.
Builds on
31 of 52 references.
References · 31
- 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
- 2022Emergent Abilities of Large Language Modelscited by 2,483
- 2021TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 1,552
- 2021UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentationcited by 954
- 2022Swin UNETR: Swin Transformers for Semantic Segmentation of Brain Tumors in MRI Imagescited by 823
- 2023ConvNeXt V2: Co-designing and Scaling ConvNets with Masked Autoencoderscited by 703
- 2021The RSNA-ASNR-MICCAI BraTS 2021 Benchmark on Brain Tumor Segmentation and Radiogenomic Classificationcited by 507
- 2023Medical SAM Adapter: Adapting Segment Anything Model for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 485
- 2019PANet: Few-Shot Image Semantic Segmentation with Prototype Alignmentcited by 449
- 2022Images Speak in Images: A Generalist Painter for In-Context Visual Learningcited by 317
- 2021SegDiff: Image Segmentation with Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 279
- 2023Customized Segment Anything Model for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 277
19 more
- 2021TransBTS: Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation Using Transformercited by 265
- 2021Diffusion Models for Implicit Image Segmentation Ensemblescited by 198
- 2023SegGPT: Segmenting Everything In Contextcited by 193
- 2022MedSegDiff: Medical Image Segmentation with Diffusion Probabilistic Modelcited by 180
- 2019Data augmentation using learned transformations for one-shot medical image segmentationcited by 138
- 2020Self-Supervision with Superpixels: Training Few-shot Medical Image Segmentation without Annotationcited by 128
- 2023MedSegDiff-V2: Diffusion based Medical Image Segmentation with Transformercited by 124
- 2023SAM-Med2Dcited by 123
- 2023The KiTS21 Challenge: Automatic segmentation of kidneys, renal tumors, and renal cysts in corticomedullary-phase CTcited by 101
- 2020Multi-organ Segmentation over Partially Labeled Datasets with Multi-scale Feature Abstractioncited by 70
- 2019'Squeeze & Excite' Guided Few-Shot Segmentation of Volumetric Imagescited by 69
- 2019Boundary and Entropy-driven Adversarial Learning for Fundus Image Segmentationcited by 46
- 2021Boundary-aware Transformers for Skin Lesion Segmentationcited by 39
- 2023One-Prompt to Segment All Medical Imagescited by 38
- 2021Modeling the Probabilistic Distribution of Unlabeled Data forOne-shot Medical Image Segmentationcited by 17
- 2023Focused and Collaborative Feedback Integration for Interactive Image Segmentationcited by 17
- 2019Automated Skin Lesion Classification Using Ensemble of Deep Neural Networks in ISIC 2018: Skin Lesion Analysis Towards Melanoma Detection Challengecited by 16
- 2021HyperSegNAS: Bridging One-Shot Neural Architecture Search with 3D Medical Image Segmentation using HyperNetcited by 14
- 2023Fully Automatic Segmentation of Gross Target Volume and Organs-at-Risk for Radiotherapy Planning of Nasopharyngeal Carcinomacited by 2
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 30; 2025: 74; 2026: 47.
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- 2025MedAgent-Pro: Towards Evidence-based Multi-modal Medical Diagnosis via Reasoning Agentic Workflowcited by 71
- 2024Surgical SAM 2: Real-time Segment Anything in Surgical Video by Efficient Frame Pruningcited by 46
- 2024Segment Anything in Medical Images and Videos: Benchmark and Deploymentcited by 42
- 2025MedSAM3: Delving into Segment Anything with Medical Conceptscited by 25
- 2026Medical SAM3: A Foundation Model for Universal Prompt-Driven Medical Image Segmentationcited by 23
- 2024vesselFM: A Foundation Model for Universal 3D Blood Vessel Segmentationcited by 18
- 2024Interactive 3D Medical Image Segmentation with SAM 2cited by 17
- 2024Medical Multimodal Foundation Models in Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment: Applications, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 17
- 2024On Efficient Variants of Segment Anything Model: A Surveycited by 16
- 2025ROS-SAM: High-Quality Interactive Segmentation for Remote Sensing Moving Objectcited by 15
- 2024Unleashing the Potential of SAM2 for Biomedical Images and Videos: A Surveycited by 14
- 2024Towards a vision foundation model for comprehensive assessment of Cardiac MRIcited by 13
38 more
- 2025Improving SAM for Camouflaged Object Detection via Dual Stream Adapterscited by 13
- 2025SAM2 for Image and Video Segmentation: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 13
- 2025CRISP-SAM2: SAM2 with Cross-Modal Interaction and Semantic Prompting for Multi-Organ Segmentationcited by 12
- 2025Vanish into Thin Air: Cross-prompt Universal Adversarial Attacks for SAM2cited by 11
- 2025UniBiomed: A Universal Foundation Model for Grounded Biomedical Image Interpretationcited by 10
- 2024Polyp SAM 2: Advancing Zero shot Polyp Segmentation in Colorectal Cancer Detectioncited by 8
- 2025Adapting Vision Foundation Models for Real-time Ultrasound Image Segmentationcited by 8
- 2025PRS-Med: Position Reasoning Segmentation in Medical Imagingcited by 8
- 2025SAM-I2V: Upgrading SAM to Support Promptable Video Segmentation with Less than 0.2% Training Costcited by 8
- 2025SAMed-2: Selective Memory Enhanced Medical Segment Anything Modelcited by 8
- 2025Memory-Augmented SAM2 for Training-Free Surgical Video Segmentationcited by 8
- 2025Citrus-V: Advancing Medical Foundation Models with Unified Medical Image Grounding for Clinical Reasoningcited by 8
- 2024Unleashing the Potential of Vision-Language Pre-Training for 3D Zero-Shot Lesion Segmentation via Mask-Attribute Alignmentcited by 7
- 2025MIRAGE: Multimodal foundation model and benchmark for comprehensive retinal OCT image analysiscited by 7
- 2024RevSAM2: Prompt SAM2 for Medical Image Segmentation via Reverse-Propagation without Fine-tuningcited by 6
- 2025MedicoSAM: Robust Improvement of SAM for Medical Imagingcited by 6
- 2024A Short Review and Evaluation of SAM2's Performance in 3D CT Image Segmentationcited by 5
- 2024Evaluation Study on SAM 2 for Class-agnostic Instance-level Segmentationcited by 5
- 2025Few-Shot Adaptation of Training-Free Foundation Model for 3D Medical Image Segmentationcited by 5
- 2025Topology Optimization in Medical Image Segmentation with Fast Euler Characteristiccited by 5
- 2026Video Understanding: From Geometry and Semantics to Unified Modelscited by 5
- 2024Ctrl-GenAug: Controllable Generative Augmentation for Medical Sequence Classificationcited by 4
- 2024MCP-MedSAM: A Powerful Lightweight Medical Segment Anything Model Trained with a Single GPU in Just One Daycited by 4
- 2025Exploring Few-Shot Defect Segmentation in General Industrial Scenarios with Metric Learning and Vision Foundation Modelscited by 4
- 2025Boltzmann Attention Sampling for Image Analysis with Small Objectscited by 4
- 2025Can Foundation Models Really Segment Tumors? A Benchmarking Odyssey in Lung CT Imagingcited by 4
- 2025Accelerating Volumetric Medical Image Annotation via Short-Long Memory SAM 2cited by 4
- 2025SAM-MI: A Mask-Injected Framework for Enhancing Open-Vocabulary Semantic Segmentation with SAMcited by 4
- 2024DACAT: Dual-stream Adaptive Clip-aware Time Modeling for Robust Online Surgical Phase Recognitioncited by 3
- 2024In-context learning for medical image segmentationcited by 3
- 2025Universal Vessel Segmentation for Multi-Modality Retinal Imagescited by 3
- 2025ConfIC-RCA: Statistically Grounded Efficient Estimation of Segmentation Qualitycited by 3
- 2025Segment Any-Quality Images with Generative Latent Space Enhancementcited by 3
- 2025Synergistic Bleeding Region and Point Detection in Laparoscopic Surgical Videoscited by 3
- 2025Semantic-Guided Diffusion Model for Single-Step Image Super-Resolutioncited by 3
- 2025SSS: Semi-Supervised SAM-2 with Efficient Prompting for Medical Imaging Segmentationcited by 3
- 2025SAM2LoRA: Composite Loss-Guided, Parameter-Efficient Finetuning of SAM2 for Retinal Fundus Segmentationcited by 3
- 2025Generative AI for Healthcare: Fundamentals, Challenges, and Perspectivescited by 3
50 most cited of 151 All 151 (JSON)
- 2026SegBanana: Steering Unified Multimodal Models into Medical Segmenters28 Sep 2026
- 2026OPERA: A Unified Omnimodal Progressive Spatio-Temporal Reasoning Agent for Referring Video Segmentation27 Sep 2026
- 2026LeCor: Learning to Be Corrected by Meta-Learned Test-Time Training for Interactive 3D Lung-Tumour Segmentation8 Sep 2026
- 2026CMRVision: A Foundation Model for Cardiac MR Image Analysis1 Sep 2026
- 2026From Reasoning to Pixels: Grounded Medical Multimodal LLMs for VQA and Segmentation27 Aug 2026
- 2026MIRA: Medical Image Reflection for Agentic Diagnosis11 Aug 2026
- 2026Topology-Aware Parameter-Efficient Adaptation for Cross-Dataset Retinal Vessel Segmentation10 Aug 2026
- 2026EliSeg: Verified Target Construction for Report-Grounded Abnormality Segmentation7 Aug 2026
- 2026Generative AI and Foundation Models in Medical Image3 Aug 2026
- 2026SAM+D: Parameter-Efficient Dimensional Lifting of SAM-Family Models via Depth-Routed LoRA and Depth Shifting31 Jul 2026
- 2026Do Medical Foundation Models Generalize on the African Brain?30 Jul 2026
- 2026Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of SAM3 for Prompt-Driven Surgical Concept Segmentation26 Jul 2026
38 more
- 2026SLIP: Segmentation with Low-latency Interactive Prompting for 3D Medical Images24 Jul 2026
- 2026Robust Activation Map Rectification for Weakly Supervised Volumetric Segmentation: Temporal Coherence as a Free Lunch22 Jul 2026
- 2026Lean-SAM2: Target-Anchored Memory and Encoder Acceleration for SAM222 Jul 2026
- 2026SAMRI-3D: Adapting SAM2 for 3D MRI Segmentation with Global Volume Tokens20 Jul 2026
- 2026UniMedSeg: Unified In-Context Learning for Multi-Paradigm 2D/3D Medical Image Segmentation14 Jul 2026
- 2026Higher-Order Cell Tracking Transformer13 Jul 2026
- 2026Towards Voxel Spacing Consistency for Medical Image Segmentation30 Jun 2026
- 2026Tractography-Driven Synthetic Data Generation for Fiber Bundle Segmentation in Tracer Histology25 Jun 2026
- 2026SARIF: Segment Anything for Robust Image Forensics19 Jun 2026
- 2026Geometry-Consistent Endoscopic Representations for Image-Guided Navigation via Structured Foundation Model Adaptation15 Jun 2026
- 2026Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of SAM 3 for Automated ITV Generation from 4DCT Images14 Jun 2026
- 2026MS-DKC: A Dataset Knowledge Card Framework for Designing and Adapting Medical Image Segmentation Models4 Jun 2026
- 2026Enhancing MedSAM with a Lightweight Box Predictor for Medical Image Segmentation3 Jun 2026
- 2026Speech-Guided Multimodal Learning for Vocal Tract Segmentation in Real-Time MRI18 May 2026
- 2026CAR-SAM: Cross-Attention Reconstruction for Post-Training Quantization of the Segment Anything Model16 May 2026
- 2026Segment Anything with Robust Uncertainty-Accuracy Correlation11 May 2026
- 2026A Real-time Scale-robust Network for Glottis Segmentation in Nasal Transnasal Intubation30 Apr 2026
- 2026SGP-SAM: Self-Gated Prompting for Transferring 3D Segment Anything Models to Lesion Segmentation19 Apr 2026
- 2026PHASOR: Anatomy- and Phase-Consistent Volumetric Diffusion for CT Virtual Contrast Enhancement1 Apr 2026
- 2026UCell: rethinking generalizability and scaling of bio-medical vision models31 Mar 2026
- 2026Automatic Segmentation of 3D CT scans with SAM2 using a zero-shot approach24 Mar 2026
- 2026Video Understanding: From Geometry and Semantics to Unified Models18 Mar 2026
- 2026EviATTA: Evidential Active Test-Time Adaptation for Medical Segment Anything Models15 Mar 2026
- 2026Prompting with the human-touch: evaluating model-sensitivity of foundation models for musculoskeletal CT segmentation11 Mar 2026
- 2026OilSAM2: Memory-Augmented SAM2 for Scalable SAR Oil Spill Detection10 Mar 2026
- 2026An Automated Radiomics Framework for Postoperative Survival Prediction in Colorectal Liver Metastases using Preoperative MRI10 Mar 2026
- 2026SurgFed: Language-guided Multi-Task Federated Learning for Surgical Video Understanding10 Mar 2026
- 2026Extracting and analyzing 3D histomorphometric features related to perineural and lymphovascular invasion in prostate cancer6 Mar 2026
- 2026Interactive Medical-SAM2 GUI: A Napari-based semi-automatic annotation tool for medical images26 Feb 2026
- 2026Automated Re-Identification of Holstein-Friesian Cattle in Dense Crowds17 Feb 2026
- 20263DLAND: 3D Lesion Abdominal Anomaly Localization Dataset13 Feb 2026
- 2026A General Model for Retinal Segmentation and Quantification31 Jan 2026
- 2026Opportunistic Promptable Segmentation: Leveraging Routine Radiological Annotations to Guide 3D CT Lesion Segmentation30 Jan 2026
- 2026Medical SAM3: A Foundation Model for Universal Prompt-Driven Medical Image Segmentation15 Jan 2026
- 2026Towards Any-Quality Image Segmentation via Generative and Adaptive Latent Space Enhancement5 Jan 2026
- 2025OFL-SAM2: Prompt SAM2 with Online Few-shot Learner for Efficient Medical Image Segmentation31 Dec 2025
- 2025Backdoor Attacks on Prompt-Driven Video Segmentation Foundation Models26 Dec 2025
- 2025TGC-Net: A Structure-Aware and Semantically-Aligned Framework for Text-Guided Medical Image Segmentation24 Dec 2025
50 newest of 151 All 151 (JSON)
- 2025MedAgent-Pro: Towards Evidence-based Multi-modal Medical Diagnosis via Reasoning Agentic Workflowcited by 71
- 2025PRS-Med: Position Reasoning Segmentation in Medical Imagingcited by 8
- 2026From Reasoning to Pixels: Grounded Medical Multimodal LLMs for VQA and Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026OPERA: A Unified Omnimodal Progressive Spatio-Temporal Reasoning Agent for Referring Video Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026OPERA: A Unified Omnimodal Progressive Spatio-Temporal Reasoning Agent for Referring Video Segmentation27 Sep 2026
- 2026From Reasoning to Pixels: Grounded Medical Multimodal LLMs for VQA and Segmentation27 Aug 2026
- 2025PRS-Med: Position Reasoning Segmentation in Medical Imaging17 May 2025
- 2025MedAgent-Pro: Towards Evidence-based Multi-modal Medical Diagnosis via Reasoning Agentic Workflow21 Mar 2025
- 2026MIRA: Medical Image Reflection for Agentic Diagnosiscited by 0
- 2026MIRA: Medical Image Reflection for Agentic Diagnosis11 Aug 2026
- 2025Robust Ego-Exo Correspondence with Long-Term Memorycited by 1
- 2025Robust Ego-Exo Correspondence with Long-Term Memory13 Oct 2025
- 2024Surgical SAM 2: Real-time Segment Anything in Surgical Video by Efficient Frame Pruningcited by 46
- 2024Segment Anything in Medical Images and Videos: Benchmark and Deploymentcited by 42
- 2025MedSAM3: Delving into Segment Anything with Medical Conceptscited by 25
- 2026Medical SAM3: A Foundation Model for Universal Prompt-Driven Medical Image Segmentationcited by 23
- 2024vesselFM: A Foundation Model for Universal 3D Blood Vessel Segmentationcited by 18
- 2024Interactive 3D Medical Image Segmentation with SAM 2cited by 17
- 2024Medical Multimodal Foundation Models in Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment: Applications, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 17
- 2024On Efficient Variants of Segment Anything Model: A Surveycited by 16
- 2025ROS-SAM: High-Quality Interactive Segmentation for Remote Sensing Moving Objectcited by 15
- 2024Unleashing the Potential of SAM2 for Biomedical Images and Videos: A Surveycited by 14
- 2024Towards a vision foundation model for comprehensive assessment of Cardiac MRIcited by 13
- 2025Improving SAM for Camouflaged Object Detection via Dual Stream Adapterscited by 13
12 most cited of 140 All 140 (JSON)
- 2026SegBanana: Steering Unified Multimodal Models into Medical Segmenters28 Sep 2026
- 2026LeCor: Learning to Be Corrected by Meta-Learned Test-Time Training for Interactive 3D Lung-Tumour Segmentation8 Sep 2026
- 2026CMRVision: A Foundation Model for Cardiac MR Image Analysis1 Sep 2026
- 2026Topology-Aware Parameter-Efficient Adaptation for Cross-Dataset Retinal Vessel Segmentation10 Aug 2026
- 2026EliSeg: Verified Target Construction for Report-Grounded Abnormality Segmentation7 Aug 2026
- 2026Generative AI and Foundation Models in Medical Image3 Aug 2026
- 2026SAM+D: Parameter-Efficient Dimensional Lifting of SAM-Family Models via Depth-Routed LoRA and Depth Shifting31 Jul 2026
- 2026Do Medical Foundation Models Generalize on the African Brain?30 Jul 2026
- 2026Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of SAM3 for Prompt-Driven Surgical Concept Segmentation26 Jul 2026
- 2026SLIP: Segmentation with Low-latency Interactive Prompting for 3D Medical Images24 Jul 2026
- 2026Robust Activation Map Rectification for Weakly Supervised Volumetric Segmentation: Temporal Coherence as a Free Lunch22 Jul 2026
- 2026Lean-SAM2: Target-Anchored Memory and Encoder Acceleration for SAM222 Jul 2026
12 newest of 140 All 140 (JSON)