Widest-Path Reachability Fields for Connectivity-Preserving Slender Structure Segmentation
Segmenting slender curvilinear structures such as retinal vessels, cracks, and roads demands topological correctness, as even a single-pixel discontinuity can fragment a continuous network and invalidate downstream analysis. Under standard binary-mask supervision, models optimized for pixel-level overlap frequently produce topologically broken predictions. We trace this to a fundamental mismatch: pixel-wise losses distribute gradients uniformly, yet connectivity hinges on a sparse set of bottleneck pixels. These pixels are vastly outnumbered by thick structures and background, rendering their aggregate gradient contribution negligible. We term this phenomenon topological gradient starvati...
| Authors | Youcheng Zong, Runda Jia, Minxuan Hu et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CV |
| Published | 8 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 July 2026 |
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