2D Semantic Segmentation: Recent Developments and Future Directions

Semantic segmentation is a critical task in computer vision that aims to assign each pixel in an image a corresponding label on the basis of its semantic content. This task is commonly referred to as dense labeling because it requires pixel-level classification of the image. The research area of semantic segmentation is vast and has achieved critical advances in recent years. Deep learning architectures in particular have shown remarkable performance in generating high-level, hierarchical, and semantic features from images. Among these architectures, convolutional neural networks have been widely used to address semantic segmentation problems. This work aims to review and analyze recent technological developments in image semantic segmentation. It provides an overview of traditional and deep-learning-based approaches and analyzes their structural characteristics, strengths, and limitations. Specifically, it focuses on technical developments in deep-learning-based 2D semantic segmentation methods proposed over the past decade and discusses current challenges in semantic segmentation. The future development direction of semantic segmentation and the potential research areas that need further exploration are also examined.