aiqbench analysis
This systematic review of 75 studies establishes that there is no universally optimal self-supervised learning strategy for medical imaging; instead, performance hinges on aligning the pretext task with specific downstream objectives like classification versus segmentation. The analysis highlights that contrastive methods favor global features for classification, while generative approaches better preserve local anatomy for dense prediction tasks, with hybrid methods offering a balanced alternative. Practitioners should prioritize modality-specific design and leverage SSL primarily in low-label regimes, as universal solutions often overlook subtle pathological patterns or fail to account for imaging modality constraints.
Task-Aligned Self-Supervised Learning for Medical Image Analysis: A Systematic Review and Practical Design Guidelines
arXiv:2605.23995v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Self-supervised learning (SSL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing the annotation bottleneck in medical imaging by learning representations from unlabeled data. However, its effectiveness depends heavily on the design of the pretext task and its alignment with the downstream clinical-objectives. We present a systematic, task-oriented review of SSL in medical imaging, examining how different pretext-task formulations influence performance across classification, segmentation, detection, and other tasks. Following PRISMA guidelines, we analyze 75 studies published between 2017 and 2025 and organize them into four paradigms: contrastive, non-contrastive and predictive, generative and reconstruction-based, and hybrid learning. Rather than cataloguing methods by architecture, we map each paradigm to the downstream objectives it best supports. Our analysis shows there is no universally optimal SSL strategy; instead, performance is governed by the alignment between the pretext task, the imaging modality, and the target task. Contrastive methods learn global discriminative features and align well with classification, but may overlook subtle pathological patterns. Generative and spatial prediction-based approaches better preserve local anatomical structure, making them more suitable for segmentation and other dense prediction tasks, while hybrid methods offer the most balanced performance. We further show that modality-specific design is critical and that SSL provides its greatest benefit in low-label and few-shot regimes. Finally, we distill these findings into practical design guidelines and outline open challenges, including pathology-aware pretext task design, resource-efficient training for high-dimensional data, and standardized evaluation protocols. This work offers practical guidance for designing more effective and clinically relevant SSL frameworks in medical imaging.
Abstract:Self-supervised learning (SSL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing the annotation bottleneck in medical imaging by learning representations from unlabeled data. However, its effectiveness depends heavily on the design of the pretext task and its alignment with the downstream clinical-objectives. We present a systematic, task-oriented review of SSL in medical imaging, examining how different pretext-task formulations influence performance across classification, segmentation, detection, and other tasks. Following PRISMA guidelines, we analyze 75 studies published between 2017 and 2025 and organize them into four paradigms: contrastive, non-contrastive and predictive, generative and reconstruction-based, and hybrid learning. Rather than cataloguing methods by architecture, we map each paradigm to the downstream objectives it best supports. Our analysis shows there is no universally optimal SSL strategy; instead, performance is governed by the alignment between the pretext task, the imaging modality, and the target task. Contrastive methods learn global discriminative features and align well with classification, but may overlook subtle pathological patterns. Generative and spatial prediction-based approaches better preserve local anatomical structure, making them more suitable for segmentation and other dense prediction tasks, while hybrid methods offer the most balanced performance. We further show that modality-specific design is critical and that SSL provides its greatest benefit in low-label and few-shot regimes. Finally, we distill these findings into practical design guidelines and outline open challenges, including pathology-aware pretext task design, resource-efficient training for high-dimensional data, and standardized evaluation protocols. This work offers practical guidance for designing more effective and clinically relevant SSL frameworks in medical imaging.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
I.2.6; I.4.0; I.5.4; I.2.10
arXiv:2605.23995 [cs.CV]
(or arXiv:2605.23995v3 [cs.CV] for this version)
Full text under the publisher's open licence · 271 words
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