Self-Prompt SAM: Medical Image Segmentation via Automatic Prompt SAM Adaptation
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Abstract (arXiv)
Segment Anything Model (SAM) has demonstrated impressive zero-shot performance and brought a range of unexplored capabilities to natural image segmentation tasks. However, as a very important branch of image segmentation, the performance of SAM remains uncertain when applied to medical image segmentation due to the significant differences between natural images and medical images. Meanwhile, it is harsh to meet the SAM's requirements of extra prompts provided, such as points or boxes to specify medical regions. In this paper, we propose a novel self-prompt SAM adaptation framework for medical image segmentation, named Self-Prompt-SAM. We design a multi-scale prompt generator combined with the image encoder in SAM to generate auxiliary masks. Then, we use the auxiliary masks to generate bounding boxes as box prompts and use Distance Transform to select the most central points as point prompts. Meanwhile, we design a 3D depth-fused adapter (DfusedAdapter) and inject the DFusedAdapter into each transformer in the image encoder and mask decoder to enable pre-trained 2D SAM models to extract 3D information and adapt to 3D medical images. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance and outperforms nnUNet by 2.3% on AMOS2022, 1.6% on ACDCand 0.5% on Synapse datasets.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 35 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2025.
Builds on
25 of 35 references.
References · 25
- 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
- 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 30,186
- 2015U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentationcited by 19,713
- 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
- 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,234
- 2021Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learnerscited by 7,403
- 2019Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLPcited by 4,236
- 2021TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 1,558
- 2021Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 1,222
- 2021UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentationcited by 959
- 2022Swin UNETR: Swin Transformers for Semantic Segmentation of Brain Tumors in MRI Imagescited by 830
- 2023Medical SAM Adapter: Adapting Segment Anything Model for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 490
13 more
- 2022AMOS: A Large-Scale Abdominal Multi-Organ Benchmark for Versatile Medical Image Segmentationcited by 351
- 2023Customized Segment Anything Model for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 280
- 2021TransBTS: Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation Using Transformercited by 265
- 2022ST-Adapter: Parameter-Efficient Image-to-Video Transfer Learningcited by 193
- 2023Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Digital Pathology: Assess Zero-shot Segmentation on Whole Slide Imagingcited by 161
- 2023AIM: Adapting Image Models for Efficient Video Action Recognitioncited by 148
- 2023Segment Anything Is Not Always Perfect: An Investigation of SAM on Different Real-world Applicationscited by 121
- 2021LeViT-UNet: Make Faster Encoders with Transformer for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 85
- 2023SAM Struggles in Concealed Scenes -- Empirical Study on Segment Anythingcited by 75
- 2023Can SAM Segment Polyps?cited by 59
- 2023When SAM Meets Medical Images: An Investigation of Segment Anything Model (SAM) on Multi-phase Liver Tumor Segmentationcited by 52
- 2023SAM3D: Segment Anything Model in Volumetric Medical Imagescited by 34
- 2023SAM vs BET: A Comparative Study for Brain Extraction and Segmentation of Magnetic Resonance Images using Deep Learningcited by 24
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 9; 2026: 3.
12 papers.
- 2025Hierarchical Self-Prompting SAM: A Prompt-Free Medical Image Segmentation Frameworkcited by 4
- 2025Prompt Engineering in Segment Anything Model: Methodologies, Applications, and Emerging Challengescited by 3
- 2025Prompt-DAS: Annotation-Efficient Prompt Learning for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation of Electron Microscopy Imagescited by 1
- 2025Memory-SAM: Human-Prompt-Free Tongue Segmentation via Retrieval-to-Promptcited by 1
- 2025Continual Alignment for SAM: Rethinking Foundation Models for Medical Image Segmentation in Continual Learningcited by 1
- 2026Atlas-Assisted Segment Anything Model for Fetal Brain MRI (FeTal-SAM)cited by 1
- 2025MM-UNet: Meta Mamba UNet for Medical Image Segmentationcited by 0
- 2025Prompt Mechanisms in Medical Imaging: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 0
- 2025Synergistic Modality-and-Slice Memory Framework for Cross-Modal 3D Brain Tumor Segmentationcited by 0
- 2025Granular Computing-driven SAM: From Coarse-to-Fine Guidance for Prompt-Free Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026MedCAGD: Context-Aware Gated Decoder for Efficient Medical Image Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026SetPlanner: A Lightweight Plug-in Point-Set Planner for Frozen SAMcited by 0
- 2026SetPlanner: A Lightweight Plug-in Point-Set Planner for Frozen SAM16 Sep 2026
- 2026MedCAGD: Context-Aware Gated Decoder for Efficient Medical Image Segmentation1 Jul 2026
- 2026Atlas-Assisted Segment Anything Model for Fetal Brain MRI (FeTal-SAM)22 Jan 2026
- 2025Granular Computing-driven SAM: From Coarse-to-Fine Guidance for Prompt-Free Segmentation24 Nov 2025
- 2025Continual Alignment for SAM: Rethinking Foundation Models for Medical Image Segmentation in Continual Learning21 Nov 2025
- 2025Memory-SAM: Human-Prompt-Free Tongue Segmentation via Retrieval-to-Prompt17 Oct 2025
- 2025Synergistic Modality-and-Slice Memory Framework for Cross-Modal 3D Brain Tumor Segmentation12 Oct 2025
- 2025Prompt-DAS: Annotation-Efficient Prompt Learning for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation of Electron Microscopy Images23 Sep 2025
- 2025Prompt Engineering in Segment Anything Model: Methodologies, Applications, and Emerging Challenges13 Jul 2025
- 2025Prompt Mechanisms in Medical Imaging: A Comprehensive Survey28 Jun 2025
- 2025Hierarchical Self-Prompting SAM: A Prompt-Free Medical Image Segmentation Framework3 Jun 2025
- 2025MM-UNet: Meta Mamba UNet for Medical Image Segmentation21 Mar 2025