# Unified Medical Image Segmentation with State Space Modeling Snake

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12760 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12760/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Mamba for medical image analysis, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 24 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jul 2025.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Mamba for medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/mamba-for-medical-image-analysis/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [Transformers are SSMs: Generalized Models and Efficient Algorithms Through Structured State Space Duality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21060/) (2024)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [Objects as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07850/) (2019)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)
- [Be Your Own Teacher: Improve the Performance of Convolutional Neural Networks via Self Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08094/) (2019)
- [Deep Layer Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06484/) (2017)
- [Segment Anything in Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12306/) (2023)
- [PolarMask: Single Shot Instance Segmentation with Polar Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13226/) (2019)
- [Deep Snake for Real-Time Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01629/) (2020)
- [VerSe: A Vertebrae Labelling and Segmentation Benchmark for Multi-detector CT Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09193/) (2020)
- [Fast Interactive Object Annotation with Curve-GCN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06874/) (2019)
- [PolyTransform: Deep Polygon Transformer for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02801/) (2019)
- [Directional Connectivity-based Segmentation of Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00145/) (2023)
- [Continual Segment: Towards a Single, Unified and Accessible Continual Segmentation Model of 143 Whole-body Organs in CT Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00162/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Abdominal Organ Segmentation (RAOS) in the clinical scenario: A robustness evaluation benchmark with challenging cases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13674/) (2024)
- [Audio-visual Controlled Video Diffusion with Masked Selective State Spaces Modeling for Natural Talking Head Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02542/) (2025)
- [GAMED-Snake: Gradient-aware Adaptive Momentum Evolution Deep Snake Model for Multi-organ Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12844/) (2025)
- [Vertebrae localization, segmentation and identification using a graph optimization and an anatomic consistency cycle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.12177/) (2021)

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

- [SegTTA: Training-Free Test-Time Augmentation for Zero-Shot Medical Imaging Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17451/) (2026)
- [TEAMS: Text-prompted spatiotEmporal dual-heAd Mamba Snake](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17421/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unified Medical Image Segmentation (UMIS) is critical for comprehensive anatomical assessment but faces challenges due to multi-scale structural heterogeneity. Conventional pixel-based approaches, lacking object-level anatomical insight and inter-organ relational modeling, struggle with morphological complexity and feature conflicts, limiting their efficacy in UMIS. We propose Mamba Snake, a novel deep snake framework enhanced by state space modeling for UMIS. Mamba Snake frames multi-contour evolution as a hierarchical state space atlas, effectively modeling macroscopic inter-organ topological relationships and microscopic contour refinements. We introduce a snake-specific vision state space module, the Mamba Evolution Block (MEB), which leverages effective spatiotemporal information aggregation for adaptive refinement of complex morphologies. Energy map shape priors further ensure robust long-range contour evolution in heterogeneous data. Additionally, a dual-classification synergy mechanism is incorporated to concurrently optimize detection and segmentation, mitigating under-segmentation of microstructures in UMIS. Extensive evaluations across five clinical datasets reveal Mamba Snake's superior performance, with an average Dice improvement of 3% over state-of-the-art methods.