# Advances in Medical Image Segmentation: A Comprehensive Survey with a Focus on Lumbar Spine Applications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03318 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03318/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 60 of its 210 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Pyramid Scene Parsing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01105/) (2016)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Swin-Unet: Unet-like Pure Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05537/) (2021)
- [UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10504/) (2021)
- [Swin UNETR: Swin Transformers for Semantic Segmentation of Brain Tumors in MRI Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01266/) (2022)
- [Understanding the Effective Receptive Field in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04128/) (2017)
- [Regularization With Stochastic Transformations and Perturbations for Deep Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04586/) (2016)
- [Learning Spatio-Temporal Representation with Pseudo-3D Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10305/) (2017)
- [Recent Advances in Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.07108/) (2015)
- [UNet 3+: A Full-Scale Connected UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.08790/) (2020)
- [Attention Gated Networks: Learning to Leverage Salient Regions in Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08114/) (2018)
- [Embracing Imperfect Datasets: A Review of Deep Learning Solutions for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10454/) (2019)
- [Causality matters in medical imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08142/) (2019)
- [U-Net and its variants for medical image segmentation: theory and applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01118/) (2020)
- [Medical Image Segmentation Using Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13120/) (2020)
- [Polyp-PVT: Polyp Segmentation with Pyramid Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06932/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Active Learning and Human-in-the-Loop Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02923/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised domain adaptation in brain lesion segmentation with adversarial networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08894/) (2016)
- [Anatomically Constrained Neural Networks (ACNN): Application to Cardiac Image Enhancement and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08302/) (2017)
- [Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation via Cross Teaching between CNN and Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04894/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Medical Image Segmentation (MIS) stands as a cornerstone in medical image analysis, playing a pivotal role in precise diagnostics, treatment planning, and monitoring of various medical conditions. This paper presents a comprehensive and systematic survey of MIS methodologies, bridging the gap between traditional image processing techniques and modern deep learning approaches. The survey encompasses thresholding, edge detection, region-based segmentation, clustering algorithms, and model-based techniques while also delving into state-of-the-art deep learning architectures such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Fully Convolutional Networks (FCNs), and the widely adopted U-Net and its variants. Moreover, integrating attention mechanisms, semi-supervised learning, generative adversarial networks (GANs), and Transformer-based models is thoroughly explored. In addition to covering established methods, this survey highlights emerging trends, including hybrid architectures, cross-modality learning, federated and distributed learning frameworks, and active learning strategies, which aim to address challenges such as limited labeled datasets, computational complexity, and model generalizability across diverse imaging modalities. Furthermore, a specialized case study on lumbar spine segmentation is presented, offering insights into the challenges and advancements in this relatively underexplored anatomical region. Despite significant progress in the field, critical challenges persist, including dataset bias, domain adaptation, interpretability of deep learning models, and integration into real-world clinical workflows.