  The one--loop effective action for the case of a massive scalar loop in the
background of both a scalar potential and an abelian or non--abelian gauge
field is written in a one--dimensional path integral representation. From this
the inverse mass expansion is obtained by Wick contractions using a suitable
Green function, which allows the computation of higher order coefficients. For
the scalar case, explicit results are presented up to order O(T**8) in the
proper time expansion. The relation to previous work is clarified.
