Boundary-by-Mask: Few-Shot Instance Segmentation with Mask-Conditioned Boundary Learning for Texture-Poor Industrial Parts

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21594v1
• Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:50:28 GMT
• Title: Boundary-by-Mask: Few-Shot Instance Segmentation with Mask-Conditioned Boundary Learning for Texture-Poor Industrial Parts
• Abstract summary: We propose Boundary-by-Mask, a few-shot instance segmentation framework that supervises boundaries instead of interior appearance.<n>The framework achieves reliable instance separation even on low-uniform and color-uniform surfaces.<n>Experiments on industrial parts and food items with ambiguous boundaries show strong few-shot generalization, robustness in feature-poor conditions, and precise control over mask-level targets.
• Score: 1.3873323883842137
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Recent advances in large pre-trained models have led to remarkable progress in instance segmentation on general images. However, industrial scenarios remain challenging. Instance definitions are often application-specific and inconsistent, and the domain gap from general imagery is substantial due to weak textures and limited contextual cues. Consequently, a direct application of existing models is unreliable. We propose Boundary-by-Mask, a few-shot instance segmentation framework that supervises boundaries instead of interior appearance. Given a few RGB images and corresponding instance masks, the method extracts rich visual features using a foundation-model encoder and trains a lightweight Signed Distance Function (SDF) head to predict boundary-aware distance maps. Segmentation masks are obtained through an SDF-to-mask reconstruction process. By explicitly estimating contours, the framework achieves reliable instance separation even on low-texture and color-uniform surfaces. The instance definition is conditioned by the instance mask. Replacing the mask specifies the segmentation target, such as the whole object or a sub-part. A pixel-wise shallow MLP head enables rapid training. Experiments on industrial parts and food items with ambiguous boundaries show strong few-shot generalization, robustness in feature-poor conditions, and precise control over mask-level targets.

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