Reasoning Segmentation for Images and Videos: A Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Reasoning Segmentation (RS) aims to delineate objects based on implicit text queries, the interpretation of which requires reasoning and knowledge integration. Unlike the traditional formulation of segmentation problems that relies on fixed semantic categories or explicit prompting, RS bridges the gap between visual perception and human-like reasoning capabilities, facilitating more intuitive human-AI interaction through natural language. Our work presents the first comprehensive survey of RS for image and video processing, examining 26 state-of-the-art methods together with a review of the corresponding evaluation metrics, as well as 29 datasets and benchmarks. We also explore existing applications of RS across diverse domains and identify their potential extensions. Finally, we identify current research gaps and highlight promising future directions.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 84 of its 111 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 May 2025.
Builds on
84 of 111 references.
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50 most cited of 84 All 84 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 6; 2026: 6.
12 papers.
- 2025Multimodal Referring Segmentation: A Surveycited by 22
- 2025Reasoning Text-to-Video Retrieval via Digital Twin Video Representations and Large Language Modelscited by 3
- 2025Text-Driven Reasoning Video Editing via Reinforcement Learning on Digital Twin Representationscited by 3
- 2026DR2Seg: Decomposed Two-Stage Rollouts for Efficient Reasoning Segmentation in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 3
- 2026Discriminative Perception via Anchored Description for Reasoning Segmentationcited by 3
- 2025Temporally-Constrained Video Reasoning Segmentation and Automated Benchmark Constructioncited by 2
- 2025Constructing and Interpreting Digital Twin Representations for Visual Reasoning via Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
- 2026An Open-Source Benchmark and Baseline for Multi-temporal Referring Segmentationcited by 1
- 2025Fast Reasoning Segmentation for Images and Videoscited by 0
- 2026GTPBD-MM: A Global Terraced Parcel and Boundary Dataset with Multi-Modalitycited by 0
- 2026From Structure to Synergy: A Survey of Vision-Language Perception Paradigm Evolution in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026DGSeg: Dynamic Gating of Semantic-Spatial Guided Predictions for Reasoning Segmentationcited by 0
- 2026DGSeg: Dynamic Gating of Semantic-Spatial Guided Predictions for Reasoning Segmentation6 Jul 2026
- 2026From Structure to Synergy: A Survey of Vision-Language Perception Paradigm Evolution in Multimodal Large Language Models24 Jun 2026
- 2026An Open-Source Benchmark and Baseline for Multi-temporal Referring Segmentation31 May 2026
- 2026GTPBD-MM: A Global Terraced Parcel and Boundary Dataset with Multi-Modality14 Apr 2026
- 2026Discriminative Perception via Anchored Description for Reasoning Segmentation4 Mar 2026
- 2026DR2Seg: Decomposed Two-Stage Rollouts for Efficient Reasoning Segmentation in Multimodal Large Language Models15 Jan 2026
- 2025Text-Driven Reasoning Video Editing via Reinforcement Learning on Digital Twin Representations18 Nov 2025
- 2025Reasoning Text-to-Video Retrieval via Digital Twin Video Representations and Large Language Models15 Nov 2025
- 2025Fast Reasoning Segmentation for Images and Videos15 Nov 2025
- 2025Constructing and Interpreting Digital Twin Representations for Visual Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning15 Nov 2025
- 2025Multimodal Referring Segmentation: A Survey1 Aug 2025
- 2025Temporally-Constrained Video Reasoning Segmentation and Automated Benchmark Construction22 Jul 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025CORA: Consistency-Guided Semi-Supervised Framework for Reasoning Segmentation
- 2025Reasoning in Computer Vision: Taxonomy, Models, Tasks, and Methodologies
- 2025RSVP: Reasoning Segmentation via Visual Prompting and Multi-modal Chain-of-Thought
- 2023LISA: Reasoning Segmentation via Large Language Model
- 2025Decoupling the Image Perception and Multimodal Reasoning for Reasoning Segmentation with Digital Twin Representations
- 2025Think Before You Segment: High-Quality Reasoning Segmentation with GPT Chain of Thoughts
- 2024VISA: Reasoning Video Object Segmentation via Large Language Models
- 2026VideoSEG-O3: A Multi-turn Reinforcement Learning Framework for Reasoning Video Object Segmentation