Detection-and-Excitation Neural Network Achieves Accurate Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Segmentation in Multi-modality MR Images

Abstract

Accurate and reliable segmentation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in magnetic resonance image (MRI) is important for treatment planning and follow-up evaluation. However, it is still challenging because NPC is infiltrative with a vague border and has a tiny volume with varying sizes and shapes. The above problems easily cause the NPC tumors’ features to submerge in the process of feature extraction. Standard segmentation methods do not cope with the “feature submergence” and performed unsatisfactorily in NPC segmentation. To address the problem, a dual-supervised method equipped with the detection-and-excitation module (DEM) was proposed. DEM strengthens the region of interest (ROI) and weakens complex and immense background through incorporating detection feature maps (outline maps) with intermediated segmentation features. To be specific, the DEM explored the outline of the ROI and output a detection feature map by using a supervised layer guided by a tailored loss function. Then, the DEM uses the results to recalibrates the intermediated segmentation. Finally, a neural network equipped with the proposed DEM was elaborately designed to achieve accurate segmentation. We applied the proposed network termed as DENet on a real nasopharyngeal carcinoma dataset to realize automatic NPC tumors segmentation in multi-modality MR images. The proposed DEM enables the neural network to segment NPC tumors within the immense and complex background. Experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method by comparing it with benchmark models.