# Semantic Segmentation In-the-Wild Without Seeing Any Segmentation Examples

Source: [Semantic Segmentation In-the-Wild Without Seeing Any Segmentation Examples](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa6b5d1e209131cea2db77>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-25T23:46:07.580Z

Authors: Nir Zabari, Yedid Hoshen

Published: 2021-12-06T17:32:38.000Z

## Abstract

Semantic segmentation is a key computer vision task that has been actively researched for decades. In recent years, supervised methods have reached unprecedented accuracy, however they require many pixel-level annotations for every new class category which is very time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, the ability of current semantic segmentation networks to handle a large number of categories is limited. That means that images containing rare class categories are unlikely to be well segmented by current methods. In this paper we propose a novel approach for creating semantic segmentation masks for every object, without the need for training segmentation networks or seeing any segmentation masks. Our method takes as input the image-level labels of the class categories present in the image; they can be obtained automatically or manually. We utilize a vision-language embedding model (specifically CLIP) to create a rough segmentation map for each class, using model interpretability methods. We refine the maps using a test-time augmentation technique. The output of this stage provides pixel-level pseudo-labels, instead of the manual pixel-level labels required by supervised methods. Given the pseudo-labels, we utilize single-image segmentation techniques to obtain high-quality output segmentation masks. Our method is shown quantitatively and qualitatively to outperform methods that use a similar amount of supervision. Our results are particularly remarkable for images containing rare categories.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.03185>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.03185.pdf>)
