Deep Interactive Segmentation of Medical Images: A Systematic Review and Taxonomy

Abstract

Interactive segmentation is a crucial research area in medical image analysis aiming to boost the efficiency of costly annotations by incorporating human feedback. This feedback takes the form of clicks, scribbles, or masks and allows for iterative refinement of the model output so as to efficiently guide the system towards the desired behavior. In recent years, deep learning-based approaches have propelled results to a new level causing a rapid growth in the field with 121 methods proposed in the medical imaging domain alone. In this review, we provide a structured overview of this emerging field featuring a comprehensive taxonomy, a systematic review of existing methods, and an in-depth analysis of current practices. Based on these contributions, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field. For instance, we find that there is a severe lack of comparison across methods which needs to be tackled by standardized baselines and benchmarks.

Publication
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Jan Egger
Jan Egger
Team Lead AI-guided Therapies
Jens Kleesiek
Jens Kleesiek
Professor of Translational Image-guided Oncology
Rainer Stiefelhagen
Rainer Stiefelhagen
Director Computer Vision for Human-Computer Interaction Lab