Deep Learning-Based Medical Ultrasound Image and Video Segmentation Methods: Overview, Frontiers, and Challenges

The intricate imaging structures, artifacts, and noise present in ultrasound images and videos pose significant challenges for accurate segmentation. Deep learning has recently emerged as a prominent field, playing a crucial role in medical image processing. This paper reviews ultrasound image and video segmentation methods based on deep learning techniques, summarizing the latest developments in this field, such as diffusion and segment anything models as well as classical methods. These methods are classified into four main categories based on the characteristics of the segmentation methods. Each category is outlined and evaluated in the corresponding section. We provide a comprehensive overview of deep learning-based ultrasound image segmentation methods, evaluation metrics, and common ultrasound datasets, hoping to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each method, summarize its achievements, and discuss challenges and future trends.