# An Empirical Study of Uncertainty in Polygon Annotation and the Impact of Quality Assurance

Source: [An Empirical Study of Uncertainty in Polygon Annotation and the Impact of Quality Assurance](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa71231e209131cea4f6cb>)

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

Data updated: 2025-10-26T01:58:41.298Z

Authors: Eric Zimmermann, Justin Szeto, Frederic Ratle

Published: 2023-11-05T16:44:53.000Z

## Abstract

Polygons are a common annotation format used for quickly annotating objects in instance segmentation tasks. However, many real-world annotation projects request near pixel-perfect labels. While strict pixel guidelines may appear to be the solution to a successful project, practitioners often fail to assess the feasibility of the work requested, and overlook common factors that may challenge the notion of quality. This paper aims to examine and quantify the inherent uncertainty for polygon annotations and the role that quality assurance plays in minimizing its effect. To this end, we conduct an analysis on multi-rater polygon annotations for several objects from the MS-COCO dataset. The results demonstrate that the reliability of a polygon annotation is dependent on a reviewing procedure, as well as the scene and shape complexity.

## 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/2311.02707>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.02707.pdf>)