# Unsupervised Semantic Segmentation in Synchrotron Computed Tomography with Self-Correcting Pseudo Labels

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.00372 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00372/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 81 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [Group Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08494/) (2018)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [Generalized Cross Entropy Loss for Training Deep Neural Networks with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07836/) (2018)
- [UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10504/) (2021)
- [Generalizing to Unseen Domains: A Survey on Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03097/) (2021)
- [Albumentations: fast and flexible image augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06839/) (2018)
- [Pseudo-Labeling and Confirmation Bias in Deep Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02983/) (2019)
- [Symmetric Cross Entropy for Robust Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06112/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross Pseudo Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01226/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything in High Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01567/) (2023)
- [Faster Segment Anything: Towards Lightweight SAM for Mobile Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14289/) (2023)
- [Road Extraction by Deep Residual U-Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10684/) (2017)
- [UNet 3+: A Full-Scale Connected UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.08790/) (2020)
- [Training Deep Neural Networks on Noisy Labels with Bootstrapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6596/) (2014)
- [Unbiased Teacher for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09480/) (2021)
- [Normalized Loss Functions for Deep Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13554/) (2020)
- [Track Anything: Segment Anything Meets Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11968/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation Using Unreliable Pseudo-Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03884/) (2022)
- [ResUNet++: An Advanced Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07067/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a widely used imaging technique that provides detailed examinations into the internal structure of an object with synchrotron CT (SR-CT) enabling improved data quality by using higher energy, monochromatic X-rays. While SR-CT allows for improved resolution, time-resolved experimentation, and reduced imaging artifacts, it also produces significantly larger datasets than conventional CT. Accurate and efficient evaluation of these datasets is a critical component of these workflows; yet is often done manually representing a major bottleneck in the analysis phase. While deep learning has emerged as a powerful tool capable of providing a wide range of purely data-driven solutions, it requires a substantial amount of labeled data for training and manual annotation of SR-CT datasets is impractical in practice. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework that enables automatic segmentation of large, high-resolution SR-CT datasets by eliminating the need to hand label images for deep learning training. First, we generate pseudo labels by clustering on the voxel values identifying regions in the volume with similar attenuation coefficients producing an initial semantic map. Afterwards, we train a segmentation model on the pseudo labels before utilizing the Unbiased Teacher approach to self-correct them ensuring accurate final segmentations. We find our approach improves pixel-wise accuracy and mIoU by 13.31% and 15.94%, respectively, over the baseline pseudo labels when using a magnesium crystal SR-CT sample. Additionally, we extensively evaluate the different components of our workflow including segmentation model, loss function, pseudo labeling strategy, and input type. Finally, we evaluate our approach on to two additional samples highlighting our frameworks ability to produce segmentations that are considerably better than the original pseudo labels.
