# DC-TTA: Divide-and-Conquer Framework for Test-Time Adaptation of Interactive Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23104 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23104/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Model soups: averaging weights of multiple fine-tuned models improves accuracy without increasing inference time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05482/) (2022)
- [Editing Models with Task Arithmetic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04089/) (2022)
- [TIES-Merging: Resolving Interference When Merging Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01708/) (2023)
- [Robust fine-tuning of zero-shot models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01903/) (2021)
- [Continual Test-Time Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13591/) (2022)
- [Towards Stable Test-Time Adaptation in Dynamic Wild World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12400/) (2023)
- [Contrastive Test-Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10377/) (2022)
- [Model Merging in LLMs, MLLMs, and Beyond: Methods, Theories, Applications and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07666/) (2024)
- [Anabranch Network for Camouflaged Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09451/) (2021)
- [Task Arithmetic in the Tangent Space: Improved Editing of Pre-Trained Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12827/) (2023)
- [Reviving Iterative Training with Mask Guidance for Interactive Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06583/) (2021)
- [Stacked Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks for Jointly Learning Shadow Detection and Shadow Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.02478/) (2017)
- [f-BRS: Rethinking Backpropagating Refinement for Interactive Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.10331/) (2020)
- [SimpleClick: Interactive Image Segmentation with Simple Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11006/) (2022)
- [FocalClick: Towards Practical Interactive Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02574/) (2022)
- [Open-Vocabulary SAM: Segment and Recognize Twenty-thousand Classes Interactively](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02955/) (2024)
- [Parameter Efficient Multi-task Model Fusion with Partial Linearization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04742/) (2023)
- [TrashCan: A Semantically-Segmented Dataset towards Visual Detection of Marine Debris](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08097/) (2020)
- [PseudoClick: Interactive Image Segmentation with Click Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05282/) (2022)
- [Continuous Adaptation for Interactive Object Segmentation by Learning from Corrections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.12709/) (2019)
- [Continual Test-time Domain Adaptation via Dynamic Sample Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03335/) (2023)
- [AuxAdapt: Stable and Efficient Test-Time Adaptation for Temporally Consistent Video Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.12369/) (2021)
- [TeSLA: Test-Time Self-Learning With Automatic Adversarial Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09870/) (2023)
- [On the Road to Online Adaptation for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16195/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Interactive Image Segmentation with Low Latency, High Quality, and Diverse Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00741/) (2024)
- [Getting to 99% Accuracy in Interactive Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07932/) (2020)
- [CFR-ICL: Cascade-Forward Refinement with Iterative Click Loss for Interactive Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05620/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Bootstrapping Video Semantic Segmentation Model via Distillation-assisted Test-Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10950/) (2026)
- [Distill Once, Adapt Life-Long: Exploring Dataset Distillation for Continual Test-Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20196/) (2026)
- [HD-TTA: Hypothesis-Driven Test-Time Adaptation for Safer Brain Tumor Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19454/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Interactive segmentation (IS) allows users to iteratively refine object boundaries with minimal cues, such as positive and negative clicks. While the Segment Anything Model (SAM) has garnered attention in the IS community for its promptable segmentation capabilities, it often struggles in specialized domains or when handling complex scenarios (e.g., camouflaged or multi-part objects). To overcome these challenges, we propose DC-TTA, a novel test-time adaptation (TTA) framework that adapts SAM on a per-sample basis by leveraging user interactions as supervision. Instead of forcing a single model to incorporate all user clicks at once, DC-TTA partitions the clicks into more coherent subsets, each processed independently via TTA with a separated model. This Divide-and-Conquer strategy reduces conflicts among diverse cues and enables more localized updates. Finally, we merge the adapted models to form a unified predictor that integrates the specialized knowledge from each subset. Experimental results across various benchmarks demonstrate that DC-TTA significantly outperforms SAM's zero-shot results and conventional TTA methods, effectively handling complex tasks such as camouflaged object segmentation with fewer interactions and improved accuracy.