# SAM ultralytics returned (estimated) IOU scores

**URL:** <https://community.ultralytics.com/t/sam-ultralytics-returned-estimated-iou-scores/1243>\
**Category:** Discussion\
**Tags:** sam, code, support\
**Created:** [July 19, 2025, 11:13pm UTC](https://community.ultralytics.com/t/sam-ultralytics-returned-estimated-iou-scores/1243 "2025-07-19T23:13:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kallinteris-Andreas](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.ultralytics.com/kallinteris-andreas/32/838_2.png) [@Kallinteris-Andreas](https://community.ultralytics.com/u/Kallinteris-Andreas)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2025, 11:13pm UTC](https://community.ultralytics.com/t/sam-ultralytics-returned-estimated-iou-scores/1243/1 "2025-07-19T23:13:42Z")

</div>

`SAM2` (and `SAM`) besides generating masks on inference, it also returns predicted IOU scores for each returned mask, but looking at the returned value it does not contain anything indicating IOU

```py
(Pdb) p results
[ultralytics.engine.results.Results object with attributes:

boxes: ultralytics.engine.results.Boxes object
keypoints: None
masks: ultralytics.engine.results.Masks object
names: {0: '0', 1: '1', 2: '2'}
obb: None
orig_img: array([[[172, 173, 157],
        [172, 173, 157],
        [173, 174, 158],
        ...,
        [245, 252, 235],
        [246, 253, 236],
        [246, 253, 236]],

       [[169, 170, 154],
        [170, 171, 155],
        [171, 172, 156],
        ...,
        [245, 252, 235],
        [246, 253, 236],
        [246, 253, 236]],

       [[168, 169, 153],
        [169, 170, 154],
        [171, 172, 156],
        ...,
        [245, 252, 235],
        [246, 253, 236],
        [246, 253, 236]],

       ...,

       [[0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        ...,
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0]],

       [[0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        ...,
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0]],

       [[0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        ...,
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0],
        [0, 0, 0]]], shape=(2160, 3840, 3), dtype=uint8)
orig_shape: (2160, 3840)
path: 'image0.jpg'
probs: None
save_dir: '/home/master-andreas/panopticon/runs/segment/predict'
speed: {'preprocess': 20.25509400118608, 'inference': 268.1850420049159, 'postprocess': 2.4642350035719573}]

```

though there is in `boxes.conf`, which resembles, an IOU (from what I understand of the SAM(2) model architecture, there is only a single “confidence output” and it is the expected IOU)

```py
(Pdb) p results[0].boxes
ultralytics.engine.results.Boxes object with attributes:

cls: tensor([0., 1., 2.], device='cuda:0')
conf: tensor([0.6291, 0.8659, 0.9429], device='cuda:0')
data: tensor([[0.0000e+00, 0.0000e+00, 3.8220e+03, 1.2610e+03, 6.2915e-01, 0.0000e+00],
        [0.0000e+00, 5.1200e+02, 1.8560e+03, 1.1930e+03, 8.6593e-01, 1.0000e+00],
        [0.0000e+00, 5.1000e+02, 1.8680e+03, 1.2650e+03, 9.4285e-01, 2.0000e+00]], device='cuda:0')
id: None
is_track: False
orig_shape: (2160, 3840)
shape: torch.Size([3, 6])
xywh: tensor([[1911.0000, 630.5000, 3822.0000, 1261.0000],
        [928.0000, 852.5000, 1856.0000, 681.0000],
        [934.0000, 887.5000, 1868.0000, 755.0000]], device='cuda:0')
xywhn: tensor([[0.4977, 0.2919, 0.9953, 0.5838],
        [0.2417, 0.3947, 0.4833, 0.3153],
        [0.2432, 0.4109, 0.4865, 0.3495]], device='cuda:0')
xyxy: tensor([[0., 0., 3822., 1261.],
        [0., 512., 1856., 1193.],
        [0., 510., 1868., 1265.]], device='cuda:0')
xyxyn: tensor([[0.0000, 0.0000, 0.9953, 0.5838],
        [0.0000, 0.2370, 0.4833, 0.5523],
        [0.0000, 0.2361, 0.4865, 0.5856]], device='cuda:0')

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Toxite](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.ultralytics.com/toxite/32/123_2.png) [@Toxite](https://community.ultralytics.com/u/Toxite)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2025, 11:49pm UTC](https://community.ultralytics.com/t/sam-ultralytics-returned-estimated-iou-scores/1243/2 "2025-07-19T23:49:40Z")

</div>

`boxes.conf` are the IoU scores