# SAM-I2I: Unleash the Power of Segment Anything Model for Medical Image Translation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.12755 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12755/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 17 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08402/) (2022)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [Hiera: A Hierarchical Vision Transformer without the Bells-and-Whistles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00989/) (2023)
- [Generative Adversarial Network in Medical Imaging: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07294/) (2018)
- [ResViT: Residual vision transformers for multi-modal medical image synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.16031/) (2021)
- [Ensembling Off-the-shelf Models for GAN Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09130/) (2021)
- [200x Low-dose PET Reconstruction using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04119/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [SAM2 for Image and Video Segmentation: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12781/) (2025)
- [MemorySAM: Memorize Modalities and Semantics with Segment Anything Model 2 for Multi-modal Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06700/) (2025)
- [FermatSyn: SAM2-Enhanced Bidirectional Mamba with Isotropic Spiral Scanning for Multi-Modal Medical Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07687/) (2025)
- [Med-K2N: Flexible K-to-N Modality Translation for Medical Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02815/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Medical image translation is crucial for reducing the need for redundant and expensive multi-modal imaging in clinical field. However, current approaches based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Transformers often fail to capture fine-grain semantic features, resulting in suboptimal image quality. To address this challenge, we propose SAM-I2I, a novel image-to-image translation framework based on the Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM2). SAM-I2I utilizes a pre-trained image encoder to extract multiscale semantic features from the source image and a decoder, based on the mask unit attention module, to synthesize target modality images. Our experiments on multi-contrast MRI datasets demonstrate that SAM-I2I outperforms state-of-the-art methods, offering more efficient and accurate medical image translation.