# Uncertainty-Supervised Interpretable and Robust Evidential Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17098 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17098/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Can You Trust Your Model's Uncertainty? Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Under Dataset Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02530/) (2019)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [Evidential Deep Learning to Quantify Classification Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01768/) (2018)
- [Uncertainty-aware Self-ensembling Model for Semi-supervised 3D Left Atrium Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07034/) (2019)
- [UNet 3+: A Full-Scale Connected UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.08790/) (2020)
- [A Probabilistic U-Net for Segmentation of Ambiguous Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05034/) (2018)
- [Aleatoric uncertainty estimation with test-time augmentation for medical image segmentation with convolutional neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.07356/) (2018)
- [REFUGE Challenge: A Unified Framework for Evaluating Automated Methods for Glaucoma Assessment from Fundus Photographs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03667/) (2019)
- [Confidence Calibration and Predictive Uncertainty Estimation for Deep Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.13273/) (2019)
- [Assessing Reliability and Challenges of Uncertainty Estimations for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03338/) (2019)
- [Lymphoma segmentation from 3D PET-CT images using a deep evidential network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.13078/) (2022)

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

- [Principle-Guided Supervision for Interpretable Uncertainty in Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10984/) (2026)
- [Quantification of Uncertainty with Adversarial Models in Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.18860/) (2026)
- [Characterizing Text Branch Sensitivity in Medical Vision-Language Segmentation via Evidence Decoupling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02663/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Uncertainty estimation has been widely studied in medical image segmentation as a tool to provide reliability, particularly in deep learning approaches. However, previous methods generally lack effective supervision in uncertainty estimation, leading to low interpretability and robustness of the predictions. In this work, we propose a self-supervised approach to guide the learning of uncertainty. Specifically, we introduce three principles about the relationships between the uncertainty and the image gradients around boundaries and noise. Based on these principles, two uncertainty supervision losses are designed. These losses enhance the alignment between model predictions and human interpretation. Accordingly, we introduce novel quantitative metrics for evaluating the interpretability and robustness of uncertainty. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to state-of-the-art approaches, the proposed method can achieve competitive segmentation performance and superior results in out-of-distribution (OOD) scenarios while significantly improving the interpretability and robustness of uncertainty estimation. Code is available via https://github.com/suiannaius/SURE.