On The Robustness of Foundational 3D Medical Image Segmentation Models Against Imprecise Visual Prompts

Soumitri Chattopadhyay; Basar Demir; Marc Niethammer

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arXiv · 2601.16383

On The Robustness of Foundational 3D Medical Image Segmentation Models Against Imprecise Visual Prompts

Soumitri Chattopadhyay·Basar Demir·Marc Niethammer

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Abstract

While 3D foundational models have shown promise for promptable segmentation of medical volumes, their robustness to imprecise prompts remains under-explored. In this work, we aim to address this gap by systematically studying the effect of various controlled perturbations of dense visual prompts, that closely mimic real-world imprecision. By conducting experiments with two recent foundational models on a multi-organ abdominal segmentation task, we reveal several facets of promptable medical segmentation, especially pertaining to reliance on visual shape and spatial cues, and the extent of resilience of models towards certain perturbations. Codes are available at: https://github.com/ucsdbiag/Prompt-Robustness-MedSegFMs

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Soumitri Chattopadhyay, Basar Demir, Marc Niethammer. 2026-01-23. On The Robustness of Foundational 3D Medical Image Segmentation Models Against Imprecise Visual Prompts. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16383

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