Complete fully automatic detection, segmentation and 3D reconstruction of tumor volume for non-small cell lung cancer using YOLOv4 and region-based active contour model

Abstract

We aim to develop a fully automatic system that will detect, segment and accurately reconstruct non-small cell lung cancer tumors into space using YOLOv4 and region-based active contour model. The system consists of two main sections which are detection and volumetric rendering. The detection section is composed of image enhancement, augmentation, labeling and localization while the volumetric rendering is mainly image filtering, tumor extraction, region-based active contour and 3D reconstruction. In this method the images are enhanced to eliminate noise before augmentation which is intended to multiply and diversify the image data. Labeling was then carried out in order to create a solid learning foundation for the localization model. Images with localized tumors were passed through smoothing filters and then clustered to extract tumor masks. Lastly contour information was obtained to render the volumetric tumor. The designed system displays a strong detection performance with a precision of 96.57%, sensitivity and F 1 score of 97.02% and 96.79% respectively at a detection speed of 34 fps, prediction time per image of 21.38 ms. The system segmentation validation achieved a dice score coefficient of 92.19 % on tumor extraction. A 99.74 % accuracy was obtained during the verification of the method’s volumetric rendering using a 3D printed image of the rendered tumor. The rendering of the volumetric tumor was obtained at an average time of 11 s. This system shows a strong performance and reliability due to its ability to detect, segment and reconstruct a volumetric tumor into space with high confidence.