English

Reliable Brain Tumor Segmentation Based on Spiking Neural Networks with Efficient Training

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2026-01-26 v1 Neural and Evolutionary Computing

Abstract

We propose a reliable and energy-efficient framework for 3D brain tumor segmentation using spiking neural networks (SNNs). A multi-view ensemble of sagittal, coronal, and axial SNN models provides voxel-wise uncertainty estimation and enhances segmentation robustness. To address the high computational cost in training SNN models for semantic image segmentation, we employ Forward Propagation Through Time (FPTT), which maintains temporal learning efficiency with significantly reduced computational cost. Experiments on the Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenges (BraTS 2017 and BraTS 2023) demonstrate competitive accuracy, well-calibrated uncertainty, and an 87% reduction in FLOPs, underscoring the potential of SNNs for reliable, low-power medical IoT and Point-of-Care systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.16652,
  title  = {Reliable Brain Tumor Segmentation Based on Spiking Neural Networks with Efficient Training},
  author = {Aurora Pia Ghiardelli and Guangzhi Tang and Tao Sun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.16652},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted at ISBI 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:17:11.823Z