Brain Tumor Segmentation Method Research Articles

Performance Analysis of Glioma Brain Tumor Segmentation Using Ridgelet Transform and Co-Active Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Expert System Methodology

Objective: The Glioma brain tumor detection and segmentation methods are proposed in this paper using machine learning approaches. The primary objective of this paper is to provide high level of tumor region segmentation using optimization and machine learning techniques. Methods: The boundary edge pixels are detected using Kirsch's edge detectors and then contrast adaptive histogram equalization method is applied on the edge detected pixels. Then, Ridgelet transform is applied on this enhanced brain image in order to obtain the Ridgelet multi resolution coefficients. Further, features are derived from the Ridgelet transformed coefficients and the features are optimized using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method and these optimized features are classified into Glioma or non-Glioma brain images using Co-Active Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Expert System (CANFES) classifier. Results: The proposed method with PCA and CANFES classification approach obtains 97.6% of sensitivity (Se), 98.56% of Specificity (sp), 98.73% of Accuracy (Acc), 98.85% of Precision (Pr), 98.11% of False Positive Rate (FPR) and 98.185 of False Negative Rate (FNR), then the proposed Glioma brain tumor detection method using CANFES classification approach only.

Brain Tumor Segmentation Using 3D Generative Adversarial Networks

Brain tumors have high morbidity and may lead to highly lethal cancer. In clinics, accurate segmentation of tumors is the means for diagnosis and determination of subsequent treatment options. Due to the irregularity and blurring of tumor boundaries, accurately segmenting the tumor lesions has received extensive attention in medical image analysis. In view of this situation, this paper proposed a brain tumor segmentation method based on generative adversarial networks (GANs). The GAN architecture consists of a densely connected three-dimensional (3D) U-Net used for segmentation and a classification network for discrimination, both of which use 3D convolutions to fuse multi-dimensional context information. The densely connected 3D U-Net model introduces a dense connection to accelerate network convergence, extracting more detailed information. The adversarial training makes the distribution of segmentation results closer to that of labeled data, which enables the network to segment some unexpected small tumor subregions. Alternately, train two networks and finally achieve a highly accurate classification of each voxel. The experiments conducted on BraTS2017 brain tumor MRI dataset show that the proposed method has higher accuracy in brain tumor segmentation.

A fusion of salient and convolutional features applying healthy templates for MRI brain tumor segmentation

This paper proposes an improved brain tumor segmentation method based on visual saliency features on MRI image volumes. The proposed method introduces a novel combination of multiple MRI modalities used as pseudo-color channels for highlighting the potential tumors. The novel pseudo-color model incorporates healthy templates generated from the MRI slices without tumors. The constructed healthy templates are also used during the training of neural network models. Based on a saliency map built using the pseudo-color templates, combination models are proposed, fusing the saliency map with convolutional neural networks’ prediction maps to improve predictions and to reduce the networks’ eventual overfitting which may result in weaker predictions for previously unseen cases. By introducing the combination technique for deep learning techniques and saliency-based, handcrafted feature models, the fusion approach shows good abstraction capabilities and it is able to handle diverse cases that the networks were less trained for. The proposed methods were tested on the BRATS2015 and BRATS2018 databases, and the quantitative results show that hybrid models (including both trained and handcrafted features) can be promising alternatives for reaching higher segmentation performance. Moreover, healthy templates can provide additional information for the training process, enhancing the prediction performance of neural network models.

Fast level set method for glioma brain tumor segmentation based on Superpixel fuzzy clustering and lattice Boltzmann method

Background and ObjectiveBrain tumor segmentation is a challenging issue due to noise, artifact, and intensity non-uniformity in magnetic resonance images (MRI). Manual MRI segmentation is a very tedious, time-consuming, and user-dependent task. This paper aims to presents a novel level set method to address aforementioned challenges for reliable and automatic brain tumor segmentation. MethodsIn the proposed method, a new functional, based on level set method, is presented for medical image segmentation. Firstly, we define a superpixel fuzzy clustering objective function. To create superpixel regions, multiscale morphological gradient reconstruction (MMGR) operation is used. Secondly, a novel fuzzy energy functional is defined based on superpixel segmentation and histogram computation. Then, level set equations are obtained by using gradient descent method. Finally, we solve the level set equations by using lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, both synthetic image dataset and real Glioma brain tumor images from BraTS 2017 dataset are used. ResultsExperiments indicate that our proposed method is robust to noise, initialization, and intensity non-uniformity. Moreover, it is faster and more accurate than other state-of-the-art segmentation methods with the averages of running time is 3.25 seconds, Dice and Jaccard coefficients for automatic tumor segmentation against ground truth are 0.93 and 0.87, respectively. The mean value of Hausdorff distance, Mean absolute Distance (MAD), accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity are 2.70, 0.005, 0.9940, 0.9183, and 0.9972, respectively. ConclusionsOur proposed method shows satisfactory results for Glioma brain tumor segmentation due to superpixel fuzzy clustering accurate segmentation results. Moreover, our method is fast and robust to noise, initialization, and intensity non-uniformity. Since most of the medical images suffer from these problems, the proposed method can more effective for complicated medical image segmentation.

Review of Automated Computerized Methods for Brain Tumor Segmentation and Classification.

Recently, medical imaging and machine learning gained significant attention in the early detection of brain tumor. Compound structure and tumor variations, such as change of size, make brain tumor segmentation and classification a challenging task. In this review, we survey existing work on brain tumor, their stages, survival rate of patients after each stage, and computerized diagnosis methods. We discuss existing image processing techniques with a special focus on preprocessing techniques and their importance for tumor enhancement, tumor segmentation, feature extraction and features reduction techniques. We also provide the corresponding mathematical modeling, classification, performance matrices, and finally important datasets. Last but not least, a detailed analysis of existing techniques is provided which is followed by future directions in this domain.

3D-MRI Brain Tumor Detection Model Using Modified Version of Level Set Segmentation Based on Dragonfly Algorithm

Accurate brain tumor segmentation from 3D Magnetic Resonance Imaging (3D-MRI) is an important method for obtaining information required for diagnosis and disease therapy planning. Variation in the brain tumor’s size, structure, and form is one of the main challenges in tumor segmentation, and selecting the initial contour plays a significant role in reducing the segmentation error and the number of iterations in the level set method. To overcome this issue, this paper suggests a two-step dragonfly algorithm (DA) clustering technique to extract initial contour points accurately. The brain is extracted from the head in the preprocessing step, then tumor edges are extracted using the two-step DA, and these extracted edges are used as an initial contour for the MRI sequence. Lastly, the tumor region is extracted from all volume slices using a level set segmentation method. The results of applying the proposed technique on 3D-MRI images from the multimodal brain tumor segmentation challenge (BRATS) 2017 dataset show that the proposed method for brain tumor segmentation is comparable to the state-of-the-art methods.

SDResU-Net: Separable and Dilated Residual U-Net for MRI Brain Tumor Segmentation.

Glioma is one of the most common and aggressive primary brain tumors that endanger human health. Tumors segmentation is a key step in assisting the diagnosis and treatment of cancer disease. However, it is a relatively challenging task to precisely segment tumors considering characteristics of brain tumors and the device noise. Recently, with the breakthrough development of deep learning, brain tumor segmentation methods based on fully convolutional neural network (FCN) have illuminated brilliant performance and attracted more and more attention. In this work, we propose a novel FCN based network called SDResU-Net for brain tumor segmentation, which simultaneously embeds dilated convolution and separable convolution into residual U-Net architecture. SDResU-Net introduces dilated block into a residual U-Net architecture, which largely expends the receptive field and gains better local and global feature descriptions capacity. Meanwhile, to fully utilize the channel and region information of MRI brain images, we separate the internal and inter-slice structures of the improved residual U-Net by employing separable convolution operator. The proposed SDResU-Net captures more pixel-level details and spatial information, which provides a considerable alternative for the automatic and accurate segmentation of brain tumors. The proposed SDResU-Net is extensively evaluated on two public MRI brain image datasets, i.e., BraTS 2017 and BraTS 2018. Compared with its counterparts and stateof- the-arts, SDResU-Net gains superior performance on both datasets, showing its effectiveness. In addition, cross-validation results on two datasets illuminate its satisfying generalization ability.

An Intelligent Diagnosis Method of Brain MRI Tumor Segmentation Using Deep Convolutional Neural Network and SVM Algorithm.

Among the currently proposed brain segmentation methods, brain tumor segmentation methods based on traditional image processing and machine learning are not ideal enough. Therefore, deep learning-based brain segmentation methods are widely used. In the brain tumor segmentation method based on deep learning, the convolutional network model has a good brain segmentation effect. The deep convolutional network model has the problems of a large number of parameters and large loss of information in the encoding and decoding process. This paper proposes a deep convolutional neural network fusion support vector machine algorithm (DCNN-F-SVM). The proposed brain tumor segmentation model is mainly divided into three stages. In the first stage, a deep convolutional neural network is trained to learn the mapping from image space to tumor marker space. In the second stage, the predicted labels obtained from the deep convolutional neural network training are input into the integrated support vector machine classifier together with the test images. In the third stage, a deep convolutional neural network and an integrated support vector machine are connected in series to train a deep classifier. Run each model on the BraTS dataset and the self-made dataset to segment brain tumors. The segmentation results show that the performance of the proposed model is significantly better than the deep convolutional neural network and the integrated SVM classifier.

The Politics of Judicial Law in the Development of the National Health Law

The abnormal tissues which are originated from the brain cells are known as brain tumor. It may be cancerous tumor or non-cancerous tumor; these can cause pressure inside the skull to increase the tumors. This damages the brain and become life-threatening. The main cause of brain tumor is still unknown. The early diagnosis is required otherwise it increases the mortality rate. The segmentation of tumor part is essential to identify the affected area in the brain. In this study, an effective method for Brain Tumor Segmentation (BTS) is presented. The BTS system uses Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), K-Means Clustering (KMC) algorithm and morphological operations for segmentation. Firstly, the input brain images are given to DWT for decomposition and it produces lower and higher frequency sub-band coefficients. Then the Inverse DWT (IDWT) is applied to reconstruct the image. The reconstructed image is given to KMC technique for segmentation. Then the unwanted regions are removed by morphological operations to detect the brain tumor in the given input image.

Moving Medical Image Analysis to GPU Embedded Systems: Application to Brain Tumor Segmentation

ABSTRACT With the growth of medical data stored as bases for researches and diagnosis tasks, healthcare providers are in need of automatic processing methods to make accurate and fast image analysis such as segmentation or restoration. Most of the existing solutions to deal with these tasks are based on Deep Learning methods that require the use of powerful dedicated hardware to be executed and address a power consumption problem that is not compatible with the aforementioned requests. There is thus a demand in the development of low-cost image analysis systems with increased performances. In this work, we address this problem by proposing a fully-automatic brain tumor segmentation method based on a Convolutional Neural Network, executed by a low-cost, Deep Learning ready GPU embedded platform. We validated our approach using the BRaTS 2015 dataset to segment brain tumors and proved that an artificial neural network can be trained and used in the medical field with limited resources by redefining some of its inner operations.

A Fully Automated Deep Learning Network for Brain Tumor Segmentation.

We developed a fully automated method for brain tumor segmentation using deep learning; 285 brain tumor cases with multiparametric magnetic resonance images from the BraTS2018 data set were used. We designed 3 separate 3D-Dense-UNets to simplify the complex multiclass segmentation problem into individual binary-segmentation problems for each subcomponent. We implemented a 3-fold cross-validation to generalize the network's performance. The mean cross-validation Dice-scores for whole tumor (WT), tumor core (TC), and enhancing tumor (ET) segmentations were 0.92, 0.84, and 0.80, respectively. We then retrained the individual binary-segmentation networks using 265 of the 285 cases, with 20 cases held-out for testing. We also tested the network on 46 cases from the BraTS2017 validation data set, 66 cases from the BraTS2018 validation data set, and 52 cases from an independent clinical data set. The average Dice-scores for WT, TC, and ET were 0.90, 0.84, and 0.80, respectively, on the 20 held-out testing cases. The average Dice-scores for WT, TC, and ET on the BraTS2017 validation data set, the BraTS2018 validation data set, and the clinical data set were as follows: 0.90, 0.80, and 0.78; 0.90, 0.82, and 0.80; and 0.85, 0.80, and 0.77, respectively. A fully automated deep learning method was developed to segment brain tumors into their subcomponents, which achieved high prediction accuracy on the BraTS data set and on the independent clinical data set. This method is promising for implementation into a clinical workflow.

Fractional Crank-Nicolson finite difference method for benign brain tumor detection and segmentation

Benign brain tumor is early stage of cancer in tumor development life cycle. Its detection is hard and most challenging task due to low variability with its surrounding non-cancerous tumor cells. Image segmentation is used as a primary tool in brain tumor detection algorithms to segment the tumorous region. It has been observed that the available methods such as region-based, watershed-based method, cluster-based method and contour and shape-based methods are not able to find such low-intensity variational regions (i.e. benign brain tumor). Current work proposes a novel fractional method for finding such a low intensity variational region. The proposed method uses alternate direction implicit finite difference scheme. The performance analysis has been done on three-dimensional numerical head phantom and BRATS dataset. Results obtained by the proposed tumor detection and segmentation method have been compared with the popular tumor detection and segmentation methods. Hausdorff distance, Jaccard similarity index and Dice coefficient have been used for quantitative comparative performance analysis.

Fully automated brain resection cavity delineation for radiation target volume definition in glioblastoma patients using deep learning

BackgroundAutomated brain tumor segmentation methods are computational algorithms that yield tumor delineation from, in this case, multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We present an automated segmentation method and its results for resection cavity (RC) in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients using deep learning (DL) technologies.MethodsPost-operative, T1w with and without contrast, T2w and fluid attenuated inversion recovery MRI studies of 30 GBM patients were included. Three radiation oncologists manually delineated the RC to obtain a reference segmentation. We developed a DL cavity segmentation method, which utilizes all four MRI sequences and the reference segmentation to learn to perform RC delineations. We evaluated the segmentation method in terms of Dice coefficient (DC) and estimated volume measurements.ResultsMedian DC of the three radiation oncologist were 0.85 (interquartile range [IQR]: 0.08), 0.84 (IQR: 0.07), and 0.86 (IQR: 0.07). The results of the automatic segmentation compared to the three different raters were 0.83 (IQR: 0.14), 0.81 (IQR: 0.12), and 0.81 (IQR: 0.13) which was significantly lower compared to the DC among raters (chi-square = 11.63, p = 0.04). We did not detect a statistically significant difference of the measured RC volumes for the different raters and the automated method (Kruskal-Wallis test: chi-square = 1.46, p = 0.69). The main sources of error were due to signal inhomogeneity and similar intensity patterns between cavity and brain tissues.ConclusionsThe proposed DL approach yields promising results for automated RC segmentation in this proof of concept study. Compared to human experts, the DC are still subpar.

AResU-Net: Attention Residual U-Net for Brain Tumor Segmentation

Automatic segmentation of brain tumors from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a challenging task due to the uneven, irregular and unstructured size and shape of tumors. Recently, brain tumor segmentation methods based on the symmetric U-Net architecture have achieved favorable performance. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of enhancing local responses for feature extraction and restoration has also been shown in recent works, which may encourage the better performance of the brain tumor segmentation problem. Inspired by this, we try to introduce the attention mechanism into the existing U-Net architecture to explore the effects of local important responses on this task. More specifically, we propose an end-to-end 2D brain tumor segmentation network, i.e., attention residual U-Net (AResU-Net), which simultaneously embeds attention mechanism and residual units into U-Net for the further performance improvement of brain tumor segmentation. AResU-Net adds a series of attention units among corresponding down-sampling and up-sampling processes, and it adaptively rescales features to effectively enhance local responses of down-sampling residual features utilized for the feature recovery of the following up-sampling process. We extensively evaluate AResU-Net on two MRI brain tumor segmentation benchmarks of BraTS 2017 and BraTS 2018 datasets. Experiment results illustrate that the proposed AResU-Net outperforms its baselines and achieves comparable performance with typical brain tumor segmentation methods.

Efficient three-dimensional super-diffusive model for benign brain tumor segmentation

Brain is most complex and central part of the human body. Millions of cells are present in the brain. Brain tumor is extra unwanted cell in the human brain. It is mainly categorized into benign and malignant. Benign tumor cells have very similar characteristics with its surrounding cells. Its accurate detection and segmentation is very challenging task. Image segmentation methods have major contribution in detection and segmentation of these tumor cells. Segmentation methods are either boundary based or region based. These methods use traditional integral-order calculus. It has been observed that these approaches are unable to detect low variational region such as benign tumor. In the present manuscript, fractional diffusion-based benign brain tumor detection and segmentation method is being proposed. It has been observed that the proposed method is able to detect and segment benign brain tumor region more accurately. Higher accuracy has been obtained due to fractional-order derivative. Frequency domain derivative definition has been used in the proposed method due to simplicity and low computational cost. A hardware model of the proposed work has been also presented in the current manuscript. The results obtained have been compared with existing boundary-based and region-based tumor detection and segmentation methods. It has been found that the proposed method is having higher accuracy in benign brain tumor detection and segmentation with low computational cost.

Evaluation of a deep learning based brain tumour segmentation method

Brain tumour segmentation is an important task in the diagnosis of brain tumours, in particular gliomas. Manual segmentation of brain tumors is a time-consuming task due to the large amount of MR images generated during imaging, and it also depends on the clinicians’ skill. Recently there has been interest in the use of deep learning, in particular those based on convolutional neural networks (CNN), to automate brain tumour segmentation more robustly. In this work we evaluate a cascaded CNN architecture on a popular public multisequence MRI dataset, consisting of around 500 patients in total. There are two networks which are separately trained on the BraTS 2015 and BraTS 2017 datasets. In self validation, the 2015 model produced dice scores of 0.9098 and 0.8308 for the whole tumour and tumour core respectively, whereas the 2017 model produced dice scores of 0.9128 and 0.9150 for the whole tumour and tumour core respectively. On the other hand, in cross validation, the 2015 model produced dice scores of 0.8762 and 0.7722 for the whole tumour and tumour core respectively, whereas the 2017 model produced dice scores of 0.8824 and 0.7454 for the whole tumour and tumour core respectively.

Di‐phase midway convolution and deconvolution network for brain tumor segmentation in MRI images

AbstractA novel automatic image segmentation technique in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based on di‐phase midway convolution and deconvolution network is proposed. It consists of three convolutional and deconvolutional blocks for downsampling and upsampling layers respectively. In first block, each input slice is separately convolved using two paths with 3 × 3 and 7 × 7 kernels to produce different feature maps. Then the mean value of these feature maps is processed into upcoming blocks in downsampling and upsampling layers. This processed outcome is classified and segmented using softmax classification. Further, the volume, probability density distribution of tumor, and normal tissue regions are calculated using tissue‐type mapping technique. This method is extensively tested with BRATS 2012, BRATS 2013, and BRATS 2018 data sets. Our experimental results achieved higher dice similarity coefficient values of 24.3%, 27.5%, and 3.4%, respectively, for these three data sets when compared to the state‐of‐art brain tumor segmentation methods.

Attention Gate ResU-Net for Automatic MRI Brain Tumor Segmentation

Brain tumor segmentation technology plays a pivotal role in the process of diagnosis and treatment of MRI brain tumors. It helps doctors to locate and measure tumors, as well as develop treatment and rehabilitation strategies. Recently, MRI brain tumor segmentation methods based on U-Net architecture have become popular as they largely improve the segmentation accuracy by applying skip connection to combine high-level feature information and low-level feature information. Meanwhile, researchers have demonstrated that introducing attention mechanism into U-Net can enhance local feature expression and improve the performance of medical image segmentation. In this work, we aim to explore the effectiveness of a recent attention module called attention gate for brain tumor segmentation task, and a novel Attention Gate Residual U-Net model, i.e., AGResU-Net, is further presented. AGResU-Net integrates residual modules and attention gates with a primeval and single U-Net architecture, in which a series of attention gate units are added into the skip connection for highlighting salient feature information while disambiguating irrelevant and noisy feature responses. AGResU-Net not only extracts abundant semantic information to enhance the ability of feature learning, but also pays attention to the information of small-scale brain tumors. We extensively evaluate attention gate units on three authoritative MRI brain tumor benchmarks, i.e., BraTS 2017, BraTS 2018 and BraTS 2019. Experimental results illuminate that models with attention gate units, i.e., Attention Gate U-Net (AGU-Net) and AGResU-Net, outperform their baselines of U-Net and ResU-Net, respectively. In addition, AGResU-Net achieves competitive performance than the representative brain tumor segmentation methods.

Robust and Accurate Automated Methods for Detection and Segmentation of Brain Tumor in MRI

In this proposed study, a novel Multimodal brain MR image segmentation method is presented to overcome the unattractive and undesirable over segmentation characteristics of conventional Watershed method. The proposed work, presents Optimal Region Amalgamation Technique (RAT) that merge the Watershed method (spatial domain) and Fuzzy C-means clustering (feature spaces) to reduce the unattractive and undesirable over segmentation in brain MR images. In the proposed work, to improve the quality of segmentation results of Watershed method, initially it construct a RAG(Region Merging Graph) for optimal RAT by applying the most popular MRF(Markov Random Field) method . Consequently, the inter-region comparison is presented by applying the watershed method in Spatial Domain and Fuzzy C-Means clustering method in Feature Space for image mapping to compute the Optimal Region Amalgamation. Further, to determine the Feature space and domain space illustration of the brain MR image segmentation, the SGD (Spatial Graph Depiction) is presented that is computed with FSD (Feature Space Depiction) which is obtained by watershed partitioning and FCM clustering method. The experimental results on multimodal brain MR image datasets presents that the proposed novel Optimal Region Amalgamation Technique (RAT) exhibits more promising MR images segmentation results with compared to the traditional watershed method. Finally, an assessment and evaluation of the state-of-the-art brain tumor segmentation methods are presented and future directions to improve and standardize the detection and segmentation of brain tumor into daily clinical treatment are addressed.

RescueNet: An unpaired GAN for brain tumor segmentation

Even with proper acquisition of brain tumor images, the accurate and reliable segmentation of tumors in brain is a complicated job. Automatic segmentation become possible with development of deep learning algorithms that brings plethora of solutions in this research prospect. In this paper, we designed a network architecture named as residual cyclic unpaired encoder-decoder network (RescueNet) using residual and mirroring principles. RescueNet uses unpaired adversarial training to segment the whole tumor followed by core and enhance regions in a brain MRI scan. The problem in automatic brain tumor analysis is preparing large scale labeled data for training of deep networks which is a time consuming and tedious task. To eliminate this need of paired data we used unpaired training approach to train the proposed network. Performance evaluation parameters are taken as DICE and Sensitivity measure. The experimental results are tested on BraTS 2015 and BraTS 2017 [1] dataset and the result outperforms the existing methods for brain tumor segmentation. The combination of domain-specific segmentation methods and general-purpose adversarial learning loomed to leverage huge advantages for medical imaging applications and can improve the ability of automated algorithms to assist radiologists.