Emerging Trends in Pseudo-Label Refinement for Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Image-Level Supervision

Unlike fully supervised semantic segmentation, weakly supervised semantic segmentation (WSSS) relies on weaker forms of supervision to perform dense prediction tasks. Among the various types of weak supervision, WSSS with image level annotations is considered both the most challenging and the most practical, attracting significant research attention. Therefore, in this review, we focus on WSSS with image level annotations. Additionally, this review concentrates on mainstream research directions, deliberately omitting less influential branches. Given the rapid development of new methods and the limitations of existing surveys in capturing recent trends, there is a pressing need for an updated and comprehensive review. Our goal is to fill this gap by synthesizing the latest advancements and state-of-the-art techniques in WSSS with image level labels. Basically, we provide a comprehensive review of recent advancements in WSSS with image level labels, categorizing existing methods based on the types and levels of additional supervision involved. We also examine the challenges of applying advanced methods to domain specific datasets in WSSS,a topic that remains underexplored. Finally, we discuss the current challenges, evaluate the limitations of existing approaches, and outline several promising directions for future research. This review is intended for researchers who are already familiar with the fundamental concepts of WSSS and are seeking to deepen their understanding of current advances and methodological innovations.

Zheyuan Zhang, Wang Zhang · 2025