A Bibliometric Analysis of Segment Anything (SA) Research: Global Trends, Key Contributors, and Thematic Insights
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This bibliometric analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the research landscape surrounding "Segment Anything (SA)" technology, drawing on 704 documents from the Scopus database between 2020 and 2025. The study reveals a significant surge in scientific production, with publications peaking in 2024, marking it as a critical year for the field's growth. Lecture Notes in Computer Science emerged as the leading publication source, underscoring the foundational role of computer science in SA research, while high publication counts in Remote Sensing and IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing demonstrate the technology's interdisciplinary applications. Key contributors include a concentrated group of prolific authors, led by Zhang Y and Li Y, who significantly shape the field’s development. Geographically, Chinese institutions dominate research output, particularly Wuhan University, Tsinghua University, and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, establishing China as a central research hub. The analysis also highlights the influence of Canada and Brazil, where fewer yet highly impactful publications underscore the field's global relevance. Major thematic focuses, such as "image segmentation," "deep learning," and "medical imaging," indicate the field’s blend of foundational AI advancements and practical applications, especially in healthcare. Overall, this analysis showcases a dynamic and expanding research domain, driven by international collaborations and diverse interdisciplinary applications, setting the stage for further developments in SA technology.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.037 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.207 | 0.298 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".