# Self is the Best Learner: CT-free Ultra-Low-Dose PET Organ Segmentation via Collaborating Denoising and Segmentation Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03786 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.03786/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [nnU-Net Revisited: A Call for Rigorous Validation in 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09556/) (2024)
- [Combo Loss: Handling Input and Output Imbalance in Multi-Organ Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.02798/) (2018)
- [Revisiting MAE pre-training for 3D medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23132/) (2024)
- [AMAES: Augmented Masked Autoencoder Pretraining on Public Brain MRI Data for 3D-Native Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00640/) (2024)
- [From FDG to PSMA: A Hitchhiker's Guide to Multitracer, Multicenter Lesion Segmentation in PET/CT Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09478/) (2024)
- [EM-Net: Efficient Channel and Frequency Learning with Mamba for 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17675/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Unveiling and Bridging the Functional Perception Gap in MLLMs: Atomic Visual Alignment and Hierarchical Evaluation via PET-Bench](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02737/) (2026)
- [Vision-Language Controlled Deep Unfolding for Joint Medical Image Restoration and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.23103/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Organ segmentation in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) plays a vital role in cancer quantification. Low-dose PET (LDPET) provides a safer alternative by reducing radiation exposure. However, the inherent noise and blurred boundaries make organ segmentation more challenging. Additionally, existing PET organ segmentation methods rely on coregistered Computed Tomography (CT) annotations, overlooking the problem of modality mismatch. In this study, we propose LDOS, a novel CT-free ultra-LDPET organ segmentation pipeline. Inspired by Masked Autoencoders (MAE), we reinterpret LDPET as a naturally masked version of Full-Dose PET (FDPET). LDOS adopts a simple yet effective architecture: a shared encoder extracts generalized features, while task-specific decoders independently refine outputs for denoising and segmentation. By integrating CT-derived organ annotations into the denoising process, LDOS improves anatomical boundary recognition and alleviates the PET/CT misalignments. Experiments demonstrate that LDOS achieves state-of-the-art performance with mean Dice scores of 73.11% (18F-FDG) and 73.97% (68Ga-FAPI) across 18 organs in 5% dose PET. Our code will be available at https://github.com/yezanting/LDOS.