# Advanced Brain Tumor Segmentation Using EMCAD: Efficient Multi-scale Convolutional Attention Decoding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05431 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.05431/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Pyramid Vision Transformer: A Versatile Backbone for Dense Prediction without Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12122/) (2021)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07919/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Dual Attention Network for Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02983/) (2018)
- [PVT v2: Improved Baselines with Pyramid Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13797/) (2021)
- [BiSeNet: Bilateral Segmentation Network for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00897/) (2018)
- [UNet++: Redesigning Skip Connections to Exploit Multiscale Features in Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05074/) (2019)
- [PraNet: Parallel Reverse Attention Network for Polyp Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11392/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08987/) (2017)
- [ENet: A Deep Neural Network Architecture for Real-Time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.02147/) (2016)
- [Embracing Imperfect Datasets: A Review of Deep Learning Solutions for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10454/) (2019)
- [Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Computer-Aided Detection: CNN Architectures, Dataset Characteristics and Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.03409/) (2016)
- [ESPNet: Efficient Spatial Pyramid of Dilated Convolutions for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06815/) (2018)
- [Standardized Assessment of Automatic Segmentation of White Matter Hyperintensities and Results of the WMH Segmentation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00682/) (2019)
- [Interactive Medical Image Segmentation using Deep Learning with Image-specific Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04043/) (2017)
- [A review: Deep learning for medical image segmentation using multi-modality fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10664/) (2020)
- [EMCAD: Efficient Multi-scale Convolutional Attention Decoding for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06880/) (2024)
- [Automatic Brain Tumor Detection and Segmentation Using U-Net Based Fully Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03820/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Decoder-Free Supervoxel GNN for Accurate Brain-Tumor Localization in Multi-Modal MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14055/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Brain tumor segmentation is a critical pre-processing step in the medical image analysis pipeline that involves precise delineation of tumor regions from healthy brain tissue in medical imaging data, particularly MRI scans. An efficient and effective decoding mechanism is crucial in brain tumor segmentation especially in scenarios with limited computational resources. However these decoding mechanisms usually come with high computational costs. To address this concern EMCAD a new efficient multi-scale convolutional attention decoder designed was utilized to optimize both performance and computational efficiency for brain tumor segmentation on the BraTs2020 dataset consisting of MRI scans from 369 brain tumor patients. The preliminary result obtained by the model achieved a best Dice score of 0.31 and maintained a stable mean Dice score of 0.285 plus/minus 0.015 throughout the training process which is moderate. The initial model maintained consistent performance across the validation set without showing signs of over-fitting.