Towards more precise automatic analysis: a comprehensive survey of deep learning-based multi-organ segmentation

Accurate segmentation of multiple organs of the head, neck, chest, and abdomen from medical images is an essential step in computer-aided diagnosis, surgical navigation, and radiation therapy. In the past few years, with a data-driven feature extraction approach and end-to-end training, automatic deep learning-based multi-organ segmentation method has far outperformed traditional methods and become a new research topic. This review systematically summarizes the latest research in this field. For the first time, from the perspective of full and imperfect annotation, we comprehensively compile 161 studies on deep learning-based multi-organ segmentation in multiple regions such as the head and neck, chest, and abdomen, containing a total of 214 related references. The method based on full annotation summarizes the existing methods from four aspects: network architecture, network dimension, network dedicated modules, and network loss function. The method based on imperfect annotation summarizes the existing methods from two aspects: weak annotation-based methods and semi annotation-based methods. We also summarize frequently used datasets for multi-organ segmentation and discuss new challenges and new research trends in this field.