DuoMod-Net: Logarithmic balancing and geometric refinement for imbalanced semi-supervised medical image segmentation.

Abstract

Class imbalance in semi-supervised medical image segmentation poses a dual challenge: it not only compromises feature learning for tail classes but also introduces significant bias in loss gradients toward the predominant background class. To address these challenges, we introduce duo-component modulation network (DuoMod-Net), a synergistic learning framework integrating two specialized components. The first component, relative logarithmic modulation (RLM), addresses the dominant gradient bias by decoupling the background magnitude from foreground balancing. It establishes the background as a neutral pivot and then applies a relative, logarithmic scaling anchored by robust percentiles to preserve the dynamic range among the foreground organs. Concurrently, the second component, disagreement-driven adaptive feature refinement (DAFR), functions as a geometric regularization mechanism. It leverages intrinsic inter-model disagreement to selectively expand the feature space during training, forcing the decision boundary to recede. This expansion is removed at inference, establishing a safety margin that enhances detection reliability. Extensive validation across varying data regimes (5%, 10%, and 20%) demonstrates that DuoMod-Net yields substantial improvements on tail classes, increases detection reliability by minimizing catastrophic failures, and maintains robust zero-shot generalization on unseen datasets.