Deep learning has revolutionized medical image segmentation; however, the clinical deployment of state-of-the-art models is severely impeded by their quadratic computational complexity and substantial resource demands, particularly in multisensor and multimodal imaging scenarios. In response, the field is undergoing a paradigm shift towards efficiency, characterized by the rise of linear-complexity architectures and the optimization of foundation models. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of efficient medical image segmentation methodologies, systematically reviewing the evolution from heavy, accuracy-driven models to lightweight, deployment-ready paradigms. In particular, we highlight the growing importance of efficient segmentation in multisensor medical imaging, where heterogeneous data sources such as CT, MRI, ultrasound, and infrared imaging introduce additional challenges in scalability and computational cost. We propose a novel taxonomy that categorizes these advancements into four distinct streams: (1) Mamba and State Space Models, which leverage selective scanning mechanisms to achieve global receptive fields with linear complexity; (2) Efficient Adaptation of Foundation Models, focusing on parameter-efficient fine-tuning and knowledge distillation to tailor the Segment Anything Model (SAM) for medical domains; (3) Advanced Lightweight Architectures, covering the resurgence of large-kernel CNNs and the emergence of Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs); and (4) Data-Efficient Strategies, including semi-supervised and federated learning to address annotation scarcity. Furthermore, we conduct a rigorous comparative analysis of representative algorithms on mainstream benchmarks, providing a granular evaluation of the trade-offs between segmentation accuracy and computational overhead. The survey also discusses key challenges in multisensor and multimodal settings, including modality heterogeneity, data fusion complexity, and resource constraints. Finally, we identify critical challenges and outline future research directions, serving as a roadmap for the development of next-generation efficient and scalable medical image analysis systems.
Shu et al. (Tue,) studied this question.