Dense121GAN: transfer learning-enhanced conditional generative adversarial network with DenseNet121 for reliable and efficient segmentation in medical and industrial imaging.

Abstract

Accurate image segmentation in medical and industrial domains remains challenging due to small object sizes, complex textures, and diverse defect morphologies. To address these limitations, we propose Dense121GAN, a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) that integrates a pre-trained DenseNet121 as a frozen encoder. The proposed architecture promotes effective feature reuse and stable information flow through residual skip connections. By leveraging transfer learning, Dense121GAN captures rich hierarchical representations and improves training stability, particularly in data-constrained settings. Extensive experiments were conducted using five-fold cross-validation across 16 heterogeneous datasets. Dense121GAN consistently outperformed UNet and ResNet-based generative adversarial networks (GANs) across multiple evaluation metrics, including Intersection over Union (IoU), Dice coefficient (Dice), Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC), Cohen's Kappa, Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM), coefficient of determination (R ²), and Symmetric Mean Absolute Percentage Error (SMAPE). The model also demonstrated stable training behavior and mitigated common GAN failure modes such as mode collapse. In addition, Dense121GAN achieved faster convergence compared to the evaluated baseline architectures. These results highlight the effectiveness, robustness, and computational efficiency of Dense121GAN. The proposed framework provides a practical and versatile solution for both clinical diagnostic and industrial inspection applications.