A-Eval: A benchmark for cross-dataset and cross-modality evaluation of abdominal multi-organ segmentation

Although deep learning has revolutionized abdominal multi-organ segmentation, its models often struggle with generalization due to training on small-scale, specific datasets and modalities. The recent emergence of large-scale datasets may mitigate this issue, but some important questions remain unsolved: Can models trained on these large datasets generalize well across different datasets and imaging modalities? If yes/no, how can we further improve their generalizability? To address these questions, we introduce A-Eval, a benchmark for the cross-dataset and cross-modality Evaluation (’Eval’) of Abdominal (’A’) multi-organ segmentation, integrating seven datasets across CT and MRI modalities. Our evaluations indicate that significant domain gaps persist despite larger data scales. While increased datasets improve generalization, model performance on unseen data remains inconsistent. Joint training across multiple datasets and modalities enhances generalization, though annotation inconsistencies pose challenges. These findings highlight the need for diverse and well-curated training data across various clinical scenarios and modalities to develop robust medical imaging models. The code and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/uni-medical/A-Eval.