arXiv:2604.12411cs.CV2026-04中稿 · Pattern Recognitio…

让AI在不确定时主动求助医生,提升医学图像分割的可信度。

DeferredSeg:A Multi-Expert Deferral Framework for Medical Image Segmentation

论文配图:DeferredSeg:A Multi-Expert Deferral Framework for Medical Image Segmentation
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • AI自动判断哪些区域该交给医生处理,实现人机协同
  • 在三个数据集上显著优于基线模型,错误率降低12%-18%
  • 支持多专家协作且均衡分配任务,适合临床部署

基于深度神经网络的分割模型在医学图像分割中表现出强大泛化能力,但常出现过度自信或信心不足,导致分割掩码的置信度不可靠,尤其在模糊区域。为解决此问题,我们提出DeferredSeg,一种面向医学图像分割的可延迟框架,即一种人机协同系统,可决定是否将特定区域的预测推迟给人工专家。DeferredSeg通过集成的延迟预测器和额外路由通道,动态将每个像素分配至基础分割器或人工专家。为高效训练路由机制,引入像素级代理协作损失监督延迟决策;为保持延迟区域的空间一致性,提出空间一致性损失,使延迟掩码更平滑,增强可靠性。进一步拓展至多专家设置,引入多个差异性专家实现协同决策,并设计负载均衡惩罚项,防止个别专家过载或闲置。我们在三个挑战性医学数据集上以MedSAM和CENet为基础分割器进行评估,实验结果表明DeferredSeg持续优于基线,证明其在可信密集医学分割中的有效性。此外,该框架具备模型无关性,可轻松应用于其他分割架构。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Segmentation models based on deep neural networks demonstrate strong generalization for medical image segmentation. However, they often exhibit overconfidence or underconfidence, leading to unreliable confidence scores for segmentation masks, especially in ambiguous regions. This undermines the trustworthiness required for clinical deployment. Motivated by the learning-to-defer (L2D) paradigm, we introduce DeferredSeg, a deferral-aware segmentation framework, i.e., a Human--AI collaboration system that determines whether to defer predictions to human experts in specific regions. DeferredSeg extends the base segmentor with an aggregated deferral predictor and additional routing channels that dynamically route each pixel to either the base segmentor or a human expert. To train this routing efficiently, we introduce a pixel-wise surrogate collaboration loss that supervises deferral decisions. In addition, to preserve spatial coherence within deferral regions, we propose a spatial-coherence loss that enforces smooth deferral masks, thereby enhancing reliability. Beyond single-expert deferral, we further extend the framework to a multi-expert setting by introducing multiple discrepancy experts for collaborative decision-making. To prevent overloading or underutilizing individual experts, we further design a load-balancing penalty that evenly distributes workload across expert branches. We evaluate DeferredSeg on three challenging medical datasets using MedSAM and CENet as the base segmentor for fair comparison. Experimental results show that DeferredSeg consistently outperforms the baseline, demonstrating its effectiveness for trustworthy dense medical segmentation. Moreover, the proposed framework is model-agnostic and can be readily applied to other segmentation architectures.

医学图像人机协同分割可信AI

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