Tumor Segmentation Research Articles

Cell Simulation as Cell Segmentation.

Single-cell spatial transcriptomics promises a highly detailed view of a cell's transcriptional state and microenvironment, yet inaccurate cell segmentation can render this data murky by misattributing large numbers of transcripts to nearby cells or conjuring nonexistent cells. We adopt methods from ab initio cell simulation to rapidly infer morphologically plausible cell boundaries that preserve cell type heterogeneity. Benchmarking applied to datasets generated by three commercial platforms show superior performance and computational efficiency of this approach compared with existing methods. We show that improved accuracy in cell segmentation aids greatly in detection of difficult to accurately segment tumor infiltrating immune cells such as neutrophils and T cells. Lastly, through improvements in our ability to delineate subsets of tumor infiltrating T cells, we show that CXCL13-expressing CD8+ T cells tend to be more closely associated with tumor cells than their CXCL13-negative counterparts in data generated from renal cell carcinoma patient samples.

AI-assisted Segmentation Tool for Brain Tumor MR Image Analysis.

TumorPrism3D software was developed to segment brain tumors with a straightforward and user-friendly graphical interface applied to two- and three-dimensional brain magnetic resonance (MR) images. The MR images of 185 patients (103 males, 82 females) with glioblastoma multiforme were downloaded from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) to test the tumor segmentation performance of this software. Regions of interest (ROIs) corresponding to contrast-enhancing lesions, necrotic portions, and non-enhancing T2 high signal intensity components were segmented for each tumor. TumorPrism3D demonstrated high accuracy in segmenting all three tumor components in cases of glioblastoma multiforme. They achieved a better Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) ranging from 0.83 to 0.91 than 3DSlicer with a DSC ranging from 0.80 to 0.84 for the accuracy of segmented tumors. Comparative analysis with the widely used 3DSlicer software revealed TumorPrism3D to be approximately 37.4% faster in the segmentation process from initial contour drawing to final segmentation mask determination. The semi-automated nature of TumorPrism3D facilitates reproducible tumor segmentation at a rapid pace, offering the potential for quantitative analysis of tumor characteristics and artificial intelligence-assisted segmentation in brain MR imaging.

Applications of machine learning to MR imaging of pediatric low-grade gliomas.

Machine learning (ML) shows promise for the automation of routine tasks related to the treatment of pediatric low-grade gliomas (pLGG) such as tumor grading, typing, and segmentation. Moreover, it has been shown that ML can identify crucial information from medical images that is otherwise currently unattainable. For example, ML appears to be capable of preoperatively identifying the underlying genetic status of pLGG. In this chapter, we reviewed, to the best of our knowledge, all published works that have used ML techniques for the imaging-based evaluation of pLGGs. Additionally, we aimed to provide some context on what it will take to go from the exploratory studies we reviewed to clinically deployed models. Multiple studies have demonstrated that ML can accurately grade, type, and segment and detect the genetic status of pLGGs. We compared the approaches used between the different studies and observed a high degree of variability throughout the methodologies. Standardization and cooperation between the numerous groups working on these approaches will be key to accelerating the clinical deployment of these models. The studies reviewed in this chapter detail the potential for ML techniques to transform the treatment of pLGG. However, there are still challenges that need to be overcome prior to clinical deployment.

Enhancing brain tumor segmentation in MRI images using the IC-net algorithm framework

Brain tumors, often referred to as intracranial tumors, are abnormal tissue masses that arise from rapidly multiplying cells. During medical imaging, it is essential to separate brain tumors from healthy tissue. The goal of this paper is to improve the accuracy of separating tumorous regions from healthy tissues in medical imaging, specifically for brain tumors in MRI images which is difficult in the field of medical image analysis. In our research work, we propose IC-Net (Inverted-C), a novel semantic segmentation architecture that combines elements from various models to provide effective and precise results. The architecture includes Multi-Attention (MA) blocks, Feature Concatenation Networks (FCN), Attention-blocks which performs crucial tasks in improving brain tumor segmentation. MA-block aggregates multi-attention features to adapt to different tumor sizes and shapes. Attention-block is focusing on key regions, resulting in more effective segmentation in complex images. FCN-block captures diverse features, making the model more robust to various characteristics of brain tumor images. Our proposed architecture is used to accelerate the training process and also to address the challenges posed by the diverse nature of brain tumor images, ultimately leads to potentially improved segmentation performance. IC-Net significantly outperforms the typical U-Net architecture and other contemporary effective segmentation techniques. On the BraTS 2020 dataset, our IC-Net design obtained notable outcomes in Accuracy, Loss, Specificity, Sensitivity as 99.65, 0.0159, 99.44, 99.86 and DSC (core, whole, and enhancing tumors as 0.998717, 0.888930, 0.866183) respectively.

PheoSeg: A 3D transfer learning framework for accurate abdominal CT pheochromocytoma segmentation and surgical grade prediction

Pheochromocytoma is a rare urological disease. Accurate segmentation of pheochromocytoma and its surrounding abdominal organs is crucial for surgical planning and preoperative diagnosis. However, current clinical datasets typically include tumor labels but lack comprehensive multi-organ abdominal labels, and detailed descriptions of the spatial relationships between the tumor and adjacent organs are insufficient. To address the challenge of automatic multi-organ segmentation in the abdomen without comprehensive labels around pheochromocytoma, we propose a novel method for automatic multi-source migration segmentation and preoperative diagnostic grading of pheochromocytoma and its surrounding organs. This method utilizes nnUNet to extract data fingerprint information from the target domain (Clinical Pheochromocytoma dataset of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, PPGL) as prior knowledge, which is then transferred to two source domains (FLARE2022 and AMOS2022). We trained 10 models and incorporated them into a "Model Bank". Additionally, we employed an improved CC-FV method to screen the models in the "Model Bank," identifying the model with the highest mobility (class consistency and feature diversity). This selected model served as a pre-trained model for abdominal multi-organ segmentation and was subsequently adapted for tumor segmentation. To address the issue of limited clinical data, we introduced a data enhancement technique for 3D medical images. The enhanced dataset was used to fine-tune the pre-trained model, resulting in a model capable of segmenting multiple organs and tumors in the abdomen. From the segmentation results, we extracted the spatial relationships between the tumor and surrounding abdominal organs and constructed a radiomic model to predict and analyze the surgical grading. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method achieves a Dice coefficient that is, on average, 10.18 % higher on FLARE2022 and AMOS2022 datasets compared to segmentation frameworks such as Swin-Unet, UNETR, CoTr, nnformer, and nnUNetv2. For the PPGL dataset, the Dice coefficient for pheochromocytoma and surrounding organs was 87.27 %. In summary, our method effectively realizes efficient and automatic segmentation of pheochromocytoma and surrounding organs, as well as preoperative diagnostic classification.

PET imaging of gliomas: Status quo and quo vadis?

PET imaging, particularly using amino acid tracers, has become a valuable adjunct to anatomical MRI in the clinical management of patients with glioma. Collaborative international efforts have led to the development of clinical and technical guidelines for PET imaging in gliomas. The increasing readiness of statutory health insurance agencies, especially in European countries, to reimburse amino acid PET underscores its growing importance in clinical practice. Integrating artificial intelligence and radiomics in PET imaging of patients with glioma may significantly improve tumor detection, segmentation, and response assessment. Efforts are ongoing to facilitate the clinical translation of these techniques. Considerable progress in computer technology developments (eg quantum computers) may be helpful to accelerate these efforts. Next-generation PET scanners, such as long-axial field-of-view PET/CT scanners, have improved image quality and body coverage and therefore expanded the spectrum of indications for PET imaging in Neuro-Oncology (eg PET imaging of the whole spine). Encouraging results of clinical trials in patients with glioma have prompted the development of PET tracers directing therapeutically relevant targets (eg the mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase) for novel anticancer agents in gliomas to improve response assessment. In addition, the success of theranostics for the treatment of extracranial neoplasms such as neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer has currently prompted efforts to translate this approach to patients with glioma. These advancements highlight the evolving role of PET imaging in Neuro-Oncology, offering insights into tumor biology and treatment response, thereby informing personalized patient care. Nevertheless, these innovations warrant further validation in the near future.

A novel brain tumor segmentation and classification model using deep neural network over MRI-flair images

A novel brain tumor segmentation and classification model using deep neural network over MRI-flair images

Accurate segmentation of liver tumor from multi-modality non-contrast images using a dual-stream multi-level fusion framework

The use of multi-modality non-contrast images (i.e., T1FS, T2FS and DWI) for segmenting liver tumors provides a solution by eliminating the use of contrast agents and is crucial for clinical diagnosis. However, this remains a challenging task to discover the most useful information to fuse multi-modality images for accurate segmentation due to inter-modal interference. In this paper, we propose a dual-stream multi-level fusion framework (DM-FF) to, for the first time, accurately segment liver tumors from non-contrast multi-modality images directly. Our DM-FF first designs an attention-based encoder–decoder to effectively extract multi-level feature maps corresponding to a specified representation of each modality. Then, DM-FF creates two types of fusion modules, in which a module fuses learned features to obtain a shared representation across multi-modality images to exploit commonalities and improve the performance, and a module fuses the decision evidence of segment to discover differences between modalities to prevent interference caused by modality’s conflict. By integrating these three components, DM-FF enables multi-modality non-contrast images to cooperate with each other and enables an accurate segmentation. Evaluation on 250 patients including different types of tumors from two MRI scanners, DM-FF achieves a Dice of 81.20%, and improves performance (Dice by at least 11%) when comparing the eight state-of-the-art segmentation architectures. The results indicate that our DM-FF significantly promotes the development and deployment of non-contrast liver tumor technology.

MRI Brain Tumor Segmentation using Cuckoo-based Dimensionality Reduction and Ensemble Convolutional Neural Network

Background Brain tumor identification at an early stage is a challenging task that increases the lifetime of patients. Specialists' conclusions on recognizing brain tumors are difficult, as they are based on their theoretical knowledge. It takes a huge amount of time to diagnose the patient. Recently, research has suggested an automated technique that is dependent on convolutional neural networks. Medical pictures are a set of accumulations of data that are hard to store and process, expending broad registering time. The decreased infiltrated systems are normally utilized as an information pre-preparing venture to make the picture information less mind-boggling with the goal that high-dimensional information may be recognized by a fitting and apt low-dimensional portrayal. Objective This study proposes an optimization-based dimensionality reduction and brain tumor segmentation using ensemble convolutional neural networks in MRI images to enhance disease diagnosis and extend healthcare accessibility. Methods Cuckoo-based dimensionality reduction and Ensemble CNN are proposed to segment the tumor region . The cuckoo-based optimization search technique is used to reduce the dimensionality of MRI Brain Images to perform better segmentation. The proposed technique is evaluated on the BRATS database, which contains two datasets: the Leaderboard and Challenge datasets. The outcomes are estimated utilizing the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC), Positive Predictive Value (PPV), and Sensitivity. Results The Experimental analysis shows promising results on the leaderboard dataset and the BRATS Challenge dataset. The proposed method outperformed the leaderboard dataset with a greater 91% Dice Similarity Coefficient (DCE), 95% Positive Predictive Value, and 87% Sensitivity of High-Grade Glioma (HGG). Seventy-two percent Dice Similarity Coefficient (DCE), 70% Positive Predictive Value, and 93% Sensitivity of Low-Grade Glioma (LGG). 88% Dice Similarity Coefficient (DCE), 90% Positive Predictive Value, and 91% Sensitivity of combined High-Grade glioma and Low-Grade glioma. For the BRATS Challenge dataset, the proposed method provides a 92% Dice Similarity Coefficient (DCE), 93% Positive Predictive Value, and 95% Sensitivity of High-Grade Glioma (HGG). 86% Dice Similarity Coefficient (DCE), 88% Positive Predictive Value and 93% Sensitivity of Low-Grade glioma (LGG). 85% Dice Similarity Coefficient (DCE), 89% Positive Predictive Value, and 92% Sensitivity of combined High-Grade glioma and Low-Grade glioma. Conclusion In this study, MRI Brain tumor segmentation using Cuckoo-based dimensionality reduction and Ensemble Convolutional Neural Network is proposed. The cuckoo search algorithm used for dimensionality reduction is performed in MRI images to reduce the dimensions. We also compared two of the existing methods with our proposed method. The leaderboard dataset and challenge dataset have been discussed. The challenge dataset for HGG provided good results in terms of dice similarity coefficient and positive predictive value. The sensitivity alone gets reduced when compared with the CNN and random forest methods. Experimental analysis shows promising results on the leaderboard dataset and the BRATS Challenge dataset.

ChatGPT-powered deep learning: elevating brain tumor detection in MRI scans

PurposeAccurate diagnosis of brain tumors is crucial for effective treatment and improved patient outcomes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a common method for detecting brain malignancies, but interpreting MRI data can be challenging and time-consuming for healthcare professionals.Design/methodology/approachAn innovative method is presented that combines deep learning (DL) models with natural language processing (NLP) from ChatGPT to enhance the accuracy of brain tumor detection in MRI scans. The method generates textual descriptions of brain tumor regions, providing clinicians with valuable insights into tumor characteristics for informed decision-making and personalized treatment planning.FindingsThe evaluation of this approach demonstrates promising outcomes, achieving a notable Dice coefficient score of 0.93 for tumor segmentation, outperforming current state-of-the-art methods. Human validation of the generated descriptions confirms their precision and conciseness.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the method showcased advancements in accuracy and understandability, ongoing research is essential for refining the model and addressing limitations in segmenting smaller or atypical tumors.Originality/valueThese results emphasized the potential of this innovative method in advancing neuroimaging practices and contributing to the effective detection and management of brain tumors.

Utilizing a Pathomics Biomarker to Predict the Effectiveness of Bevacizumab in Ovarian Cancer Treatment.

The purpose of this investigation is to develop and initially assess a quantitative image analysis scheme that utilizes histopathological images to predict the treatment effectiveness of bevacizumab therapy in ovarian cancer patients. As a widely accessible diagnostic tool, histopathological slides contain copious information regarding underlying tumor progression that is associated with tumor prognosis. However, this information cannot be readily identified by conventional visual examination. This study utilizes novel pathomics technology to quantify this meaningful information for treatment effectiveness prediction. Accordingly, a total of 9828 features were extracted from segmented tumor tissue, cell nuclei, and cell cytoplasm, which were categorized into geometric, intensity, texture, and subcellular structure features. Next, the best performing features were selected as the input for SVM (support vector machine)-based prediction models. These models were evaluated on an open dataset containing a total of 78 patients and 288 whole slides images. The results indicated that the sufficiently optimized, best-performing model yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.8312. When examining the best model's confusion matrix, 37 and 25 cases were correctly predicted as responders and non-responders, respectively, achieving an overall accuracy of 0.7848. This investigation initially validated the feasibility of utilizing pathomics techniques to predict tumor responses to chemotherapy at an early stage.

Automation of Wilms’ tumor segmentation by artificial intelligence

Background3D reconstruction of Wilms’ tumor provides several advantages but are not systematically performed because manual segmentation is extremely time-consuming. The objective of our study was to develop an artificial intelligence tool to automate the segmentation of tumors and kidneys in children.MethodsA manual segmentation was carried out by two experts on 14 CT scans. Then, the segmentation of Wilms’ tumor and neoplastic kidney was automatically performed using the CNN U-Net and the same CNN U-Net trained according to the OV2ASSION method. The time saving for the expert was estimated depending on the number of sections automatically segmented.ResultsWhen segmentations were performed manually by two experts, the inter-individual variability resulted in a Dice index of 0.95 for tumor and 0.87 for kidney. Fully automatic segmentation with the CNN U-Net yielded a poor Dice index of 0.69 for Wilms’ tumor and 0.27 for kidney. With the OV2ASSION method, the Dice index varied depending on the number of manually segmented sections. For the segmentation of the Wilms’ tumor and neoplastic kidney, it varied respectively from 0.97 to 0.94 for a gap of 1 (2 out of 3 sections performed manually) to 0.94 and 0.86 for a gap of 10 (1 section out of 6 performed manually).ConclusionFully automated segmentation remains a challenge in the field of medical image processing. Although it is possible to use already developed neural networks, such as U-Net, we found that the results obtained were not satisfactory for segmentation of neoplastic kidneys or Wilms’ tumors in children. We developed an innovative CNN U-Net training method that makes it possible to segment the kidney and its tumor with the same precision as an expert while reducing their intervention time by 80%.

Attention-guided context asymmetric fusion networks for the liver tumor segmentation of computed tomography images.

Liver tumor segmentation based on medical imaging is playing an increasingly important role in liver tumor research and individualized therapeutic decision-making. However, it remains a challenging in terms of the accuracy of automatic segmentation of liver tumors. Therefore, we aimed to develop a novel deep neural network for improving the results from the automatic segmentation of liver tumors. This paper proposes the attention-guided context asymmetric fusion network (AGCAF-Net), combining attention guidance and fusion context modules on the basis of a residual neural network for the automatic segmentation of liver tumors. According to the attention-guided context block (AGCB), the feature map is first divided into multiple small blocks, the local correlation between features is calculated, and then the global nonlocal fusion module (GNFM) is used to obtain the global information between pixels. Additionally, the context pyramid module (CPM) and asymmetric semantic fusion module (AFM) are used to obtain multiscale features and resolve the feature mismatch during feature fusion, respectively. Finally, we used the liver tumor segmentation benchmark (LiTS) dataset to verify the efficiency of our designed network. Our results showed that AGCAF-Net with AFM and CPM is effective in improving the accuracy of liver tumor segmentation, with the Dice coefficient increasing from 82.5% to 84.1%. The segmentation results of liver tumors by AGCAF-Net were superior to those of several state-of-the-art U-net methods, with a Dice coefficient of 84.1%, a sensitivity of 91.7%, and an average symmetric surface distance of 3.52. AGCAF-Net can obtain better matched and accurate segmentation in liver tumor segmentation, thus effectively improving the accuracy of liver tumor segmentation.

Convolutional Neural Network‐Based CT Image Segmentation of Kidney Tumours

ABSTRACTKidney tumours are one of the most common tumours in humans and the main current treatment is surgical removal. The CT images are usually manually segmented by a specialist for pre‐operative planning, but this can be influenced by the surgeon's experience and skill and can be time‐consuming. Due to the complex lesions and different morphologies of kidney tumours that make segmentation difficult, this article proposes a convolutional neural network‐based automatic segmentation method for CT images of kidney tumours to address the most common problems of boundary blurring and false positives in tumour segmentation images. The method is highly accurate and reliable, and is used to assist doctors in surgical planning as well as diagnostic treatment, relieving medical pressure to a certain extent. The EfficientNetV2‐UNet segmentation model proposed in this article includes three main parts: feature extractor, reconstruction network and Bayesian decision algorithm. Firstly, for the phenomenon of tumour false positives, the EfficientNetV2 feature extractor, which has high training accuracy and efficiency, is selected as the backbone network, which extracts shallow features such as tumour location, morphology and texture in the CT image by downsampling. Secondly, on the basis of the backbone network, the reconstruction network is designed, which mainly consists of conversion block, deconvolution block, convolution block and output block. Then, the up‐sampling architecture is constructed to gradually recover the spatial resolution of the feature map, fully identify the contextual information and form a complete encoding–decoding structure. Multi‐scale feature fusion is achieved by superimposing all levels of feature map channels on the left and right sides of the network, preventing the loss of details and performing accurate tumour segmentation. Finally, a Bayesian decision algorithm is designed for the edge blurring phenomenon of segmented tumours and cascaded over the output of the reconstruction network, combining the edge features of the original CT image and the segmented image for probability estimation, which is used to improve the accuracy of the model edge segmentation. Medical images in NII special format were converted to Numpy matrix format using python, and then more than 2000 CT images containing only kidney tumours were selected from the KiTS19 dataset as the dataset for the model, and the dimensions were standardised to 128 × 128, and the experimental results show that the model outperforms many other advanced models with good segmentation performance.

Shape-Scale Co-Awareness Network for 3D Brain Tumor Segmentation.

The accurate segmentation of brain tumor is significant in clinical practice. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based methods have made great progress in brain tumor segmentation due to powerful local modeling ability. However, brain tumors are frequently pattern-agnostic, i.e. variable in shape, size and location, which can not be effectively matched by traditional CNN-based methods with local and regular receptive fields. To address the above issues, we propose a shape-scale co-awareness network (S2CA-Net) for brain tumor segmentation, which can efficiently learn shape-aware and scale-aware features simultaneously to enhance pattern-agnostic representations. Primarily, three key components are proposed to accomplish the co-awareness of shape and scale. The Local-Global Scale Mixer (LGSM) decouples the extraction of local and global context by adopting the CNN-Former parallel structure, which contributes to obtaining finer hierarchical features. The Multi-level Context Aggregator (MCA) enriches the scale diversity of input patches by modeling global features across multiple receptive fields. The Multi-Scale Attentive Deformable Convolution (MS-ADC) learns the target deformation based on the multiscale inputs, which motivates the network to enforce feature constraints both in terms of scale and shape for optimal feature matching. Overall, LGSM and MCA focus on enhancing the scale-awareness of the network to cope with the size and location variations, while MS-ADC focuses on capturing deformation information for optimal shape matching. Finally, their effective integration prompts the network to perceive variations in shape and scale simultaneously, which can robustly tackle the variations in patterns of brain tumors. The experimental results on BraTS 2019, BraTS 2020, MSD BTS Task and BraTS2023-MEN show that S2CA-Net has superior overall performance in accuracy and efficiency compared to other state-of-the-art methods. Code: https://github.com/jiangyu945/S2CA-Net.

A Federated Learning Framework for Brain Tumor Segmentation Without Sharing Patient Data

ABSTRACTBrain tumors pose a significant threat to human health, necessitating early detection and accurate diagnosis to enhance treatment outcomes. However, centralized data collection and processing encounter challenges related to privacy breaches and data integration due to the sensitivity and diversity of brain tumor patient data. In response, this paper proposes an innovative federated learning‐based approach for brain tumor detection, facilitating multicenter data sharing while safeguarding individual data privacy. Our proposed federated learning architecture features each medical center as a participant, with each retaining local data and engaging in secure communication with a central server. Within this federated migration learning framework, each medical center independently trains a base model on its local data and transmits a fraction of the model's parameters to the central server. The central server leverages these parameters for model aggregation and knowledge sharing, facilitating the exchange and migration of models among participating medical centers. This collaborative approach empowers individual medical centers to share knowledge and experiences, thereby enhancing the performance and accuracy of the brain tumor detection model. To validate our federated learning model, we conduct comprehensive evaluations using an independent test dataset, comparing its performance with traditional centralized learning approaches. The experimental results underscore the superiority of the federated learning‐based brain tumor detection approach, achieving heightened detection performance compared with traditional methods while meticulously preserving data privacy. In conclusion, our study presents an innovative solution for effective data collaboration and privacy protection in the realm of brain tumor detection, holding promising clinical applications. The federated learning approach not only advances detection accuracy but also establishes a secure and privacy‐preserving foundation for collaborative research in medical imaging.

Res‐MulFra: Multilevel and Multiscale Framework for Brain Tumor Segmentation

ABSTRACTIn clinical diagnosis and surgical planning, extracting brain tumors from magnetic resonance images (MRI) is very important. Nevertheless, considering the high variability and imbalance of the brain tumor datasets, the way of designing a deep neural network for accurately segmenting the brain tumor still challenges the researchers. Moreover, as the number of convolutional layers increases, the deep feature maps cannot provide fine‐grained spatial information, and this feature information is useful for segmenting brain tumors from the MRI. Aiming to solve this problem, a brain tumor segmenting method of residual multilevel and multiscale framework (Res‐MulFra) is proposed in this article. In the proposed framework, the multilevel is realized by stacking the proposed RMFM‐based segmentation network (RMFMSegNet), which is mainly used to leverage the prior knowledge to gain a better brain tumor segmentation performance. The multiscale is implemented by the proposed RMFMSegNet, which includes both the parallel multibranch structure and the serial multibranch structure, and is mainly designed for obtaining the multiscale feature information. Moreover, from various receptive fields, a residual multiscale feature fusion module (RMFM) is also proposed to effectively combine the contextual feature information. Furthermore, in order to gain a better brain tumor segmentation performance, the channel attention module is also adopted. Through assessing the devised framework on the BraTS dataset and comparing it with other advanced methods, the effectiveness of the Res‐MulFra is verified by the extensive experimental results. For the BraTS2015 testing dataset, the Dice value of the proposed method is 0.85 for the complete area, 0.72 for the core area, and 0.62 for the enhanced area.

CMAF-Net: a cross-modal attention fusion-based deep neural network for incomplete multi-modal brain tumor segmentation.

The information between multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is complementary. Combining multiple modalities for brain tumor image segmentation can improve segmentation accuracy, which has great significance for disease diagnosis and treatment. However, different degrees of missing modality data often occur in clinical practice, which may lead to serious performance degradation or even failure of brain tumor segmentation methods relying on full-modality sequences to complete the segmentation task. To solve the above problems, this study aimed to design a new deep learning network for incomplete multimodal brain tumor segmentation. We propose a novel cross-modal attention fusion-based deep neural network (CMAF-Net) for incomplete multimodal brain tumor segmentation, which is based on a three-dimensional (3D) U-Net architecture with encoding and decoding structure, a 3D Swin block, and a cross-modal attention fusion (CMAF) block. A convolutional encoder is initially used to extract the specific features from different modalities, and an effective 3D Swin block is constructed to model the long-range dependencies to obtain richer information for brain tumor segmentation. Then, a cross-attention based CMAF module is proposed that can deal with different missing modality situations by fusing features between different modalities to learn the shared representations of the tumor regions. Finally, the fused latent representation is decoded to obtain the final segmentation result. Additionally, channel attention module (CAM) and spatial attention module (SAM) are incorporated into the network to further improve the robustness of the model; the CAM to help focus on important feature channels, and the SAM to learn the importance of different spatial regions. Evaluation experiments on the widely-used BraTS 2018 and BraTS 2020 datasets demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed CMAF-Net which achieved average Dice scores of 87.9%, 81.8%, and 64.3%, as well as Hausdorff distances of 4.21, 5.35, and 4.02 for whole tumor, tumor core, and enhancing tumor on the BraTS 2020 dataset, respectively, outperforming several state-of-the-art segmentation methods in missing modalities situations. The experimental results show that the proposed CMAF-Net can achieve accurate brain tumor segmentation in the case of missing modalities with promising application potential.

Stepwise Transfer Learning for Expert-level Pediatric Brain Tumor MRI Segmentation in a Limited Data Scenario.

Purpose To develop, externally test, and evaluate clinical acceptability of a deep learning pediatric brain tumor segmentation model using stepwise transfer learning. Materials and Methods In this retrospective study, the authors leveraged two T2-weighted MRI datasets (May 2001 through December 2015) from a national brain tumor consortium (n = 184; median age, 7 years [range, 1-23 years]; 94 male patients) and a pediatric cancer center (n = 100; median age, 8 years [range, 1-19 years]; 47 male patients) to develop and evaluate deep learning neural networks for pediatric low-grade glioma segmentation using a stepwise transfer learning approach to maximize performance in a limited data scenario. The best model was externally tested on an independent test set and subjected to randomized blinded evaluation by three clinicians, wherein they assessed clinical acceptability of expert- and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated segmentations via 10-point Likert scales and Turing tests. Results The best AI model used in-domain stepwise transfer learning (median Dice score coefficient, 0.88 [IQR, 0.72-0.91] vs 0.812 [IQR, 0.56-0.89] for baseline model; P = .049). With external testing, the AI model yielded excellent accuracy using reference standards from three clinical experts (median Dice similarity coefficients: expert 1, 0.83 [IQR, 0.75-0.90]; expert 2, 0.81 [IQR, 0.70-0.89]; expert 3, 0.81 [IQR, 0.68-0.88]; mean accuracy, 0.82). For clinical benchmarking (n = 100 scans), experts rated AI-based segmentations higher on average compared with other experts (median Likert score, 9 [IQR, 7-9] vs 7 [IQR 7-9]) and rated more AI segmentations as clinically acceptable (80.2% vs 65.4%). Experts correctly predicted the origin of AI segmentations in an average of 26.0% of cases. Conclusion Stepwise transfer learning enabled expert-level automated pediatric brain tumor autosegmentation and volumetric measurement with a high level of clinical acceptability. Keywords: Stepwise Transfer Learning, Pediatric Brain Tumors, MRI Segmentation, Deep Learning Supplemental material is available for this article. © RSNA, 2024.

LIVER CANCER IMAGE PREPROCESSING AND FEATURE SELECTION USING A HYBRID DEEP LEARNING NETWORK

A liver's primary duties include producing bile, which is necessary for the breakdown of fats, filtering and changing potentially harmful compounds in the blood, and storing vitamins and nutrients. The diagnosis of malignant liver lesions can be made using a variety of techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and/or CT scanning with multiphase contrast agent injection. focuses on the methods for creating tumor and liver segmentation with the IVGG19-UNeT hybrid deep learning network. The suggested model's deep learning network scheme structure is made up of preprocessing, feature extraction, classification, and segmentation. With over 98% accuracy in tumor categorization, the suggested method accurately identifies the greatest number of tumor regions.