Automated segmentation of brain MR images

A simple, robust and efficient image segmentation algorithm for classifying brain tissues from dual echo Magnetic Resonance (MR) images is presented. The algorithm consists of a sequence of adaptive histogram analysis, morphological operations and knowledge based rules to accurately classify various regions such as the brain matter and the cerebrospinal fluid, and detect if there are any abnormal regions. It can be completely automated and has been tested on over hundred images from several patient studies. Experimental results are provided.     

Rough set based bilateral filter design for denoising brain MR images

A study on bilateral filter for denoising reveals that more informative the filters are, better is the result expected. Moreover, getting precise information of the image with noise is a difficult task. In the current work, a rough set theory (RST) based approach is used to derive pixel level edge map and class labels which in turn are used to improve the performance of bilateral filters. RST handles the uncertainty present in the data even under noise. The basic structure of existing bilateral filter is not changed much, however, boosted up by prior information derived by rough edge map and rough class labels. The filter is extensively applied to denoise brain MR images. The results are compared with that of the state-of-the-art approaches. The experiments have been performed on two real (normal and pathological disordered) human MR databases. The performance of the proposed filter is found to be better, in terms of benchmark metrics.     

基于模糊马尔可夫场的脑部MR图像分割算法

在传统马尔可夫场模型的基础上,建立了模糊马尔可夫场模型。通过对模型的分析得出图像像素对不同类的隶属度计算公式,提出了一种高效、无监督的图像分割算法,从而实现了对脑部MR图像的精确分割。通过对模拟脑部MR图像和临床脑部MR图像分割实验,表明新算法比传统的基于马尔可夫场的图像分割算法和模糊C-均值等图像分割算法有更精确的图像分割能力。     

Deep learning based enhanced tumor segmentation approach for MR brain images

Automation in medical industry has become one of the necessities in today’s medical scenario. Radiologists/physicians need such automation techniques for accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. Automatic segmentation of tumor portion from Magnetic Resonance (MR) brain images is a challenging task. Several methodologies have been developed with an objective to enhance the segmentation efficiency of the automated system. However, there is always scope for improvement in the segmentation process of medical image analysis. In this work, deep learning-based approach is proposed for brain tumor image segmentation. The proposed method includes the concept of Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) and new Growing Convolution Neural Network (GCNN). The significant objective of this work is to enhance the accuracy of the conventional system. A comparative analysis with Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Convolution Neural Network (CNN) is carried out in this work. The experimental results prove that the proposed technique has outperformed SVM and CNN in terms of accuracy, PSNR, MSE and other performance parameters.     

MRI脑肿瘤图像的超像素/体素分割及发展现状

超像素/体素分割算法把具有相同结构信息的点划分至同一子区域,获得可准确描述图像局部特征且符合功能子结构的平滑边缘信息,在医学磁共振成像(magnetic resonance imaging, MRI)分割领域广泛应用。本文比较了不同超像素算法分割脑肿瘤医学图像的性能。归纳并总结了多种最新超像素/体素算法的研究成果及应用,为进一步比较算法性能,选取了多模态脑肿瘤分割挑战赛(Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge, Bra TS)2018数据集中的部分脑肿瘤图像进行超像素分割。同时,通过边缘召回率、欠分割错误率、紧密度评测和可达分割准确率4项指标分析算法性能,并阐述算法的未来发展趋势和可行性空间。通过上述算法分析可得:基于图论的(graph-based)、标准化分割(normalized cut)、随机游走算法(lazy random walk)可获得精准的核心肿瘤信息,但对增强肿瘤的准确率稍显不足,不利于后续特征区域提取。基于密度的聚类算法(density-based spatial clustering of applications...     

MRI脑肿瘤图像分割研究进展及挑战

脑肿瘤分割是医学图像处理中的一项重要内容,其目的是辅助医生做出准确的诊断和治疗,在临床脑部医学领域具有重要的实用价值。核磁共振成像（MRI）是临床医生研究脑部组织结构的主要影像学工具,为了使更多研究者对MRI脑肿瘤图像分割理论及其发展进行探索,本文对该领域研究现状进行综述。首先总结了用于MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的方法,并对现有方法进行了分类,即分为监督分割和非监督分割;然后重点综述了基于深度学习的脑肿瘤分割方法,在研究其关键技术基础上归纳了优化策略;最后介绍了脑肿瘤分割（BraTS）挑战,并结合挑战中所用方法展望了脑肿瘤分割领域未来的发展趋势。MRI脑肿瘤图像分割领域的研究已经取得了一些显著进展,尤其是深度学习的发展为该领域的研究提供了新的思路。但由于脑肿瘤在大小、形状和位置方面的高度变化,以及脑肿瘤图像数据有限且类别不平衡等问题,使得脑肿瘤图像分割仍是一个极具挑战的课题。由于分割过程缺乏可解释性和透明性,如何将全自动分割方法应用于临床试验,还需要进行深入研究。     

基于t-混合模型的脑MR图像白质分割

核磁共振成像（MRI）作为临床辅助诊断和研究的重要工具,MR图像分割的准确性直接影响着后续处理的正确性和有效性。在目前的图像分割算法中,基于t-混合模型的图像分割方法因其快速和稳健性而受到重视。该方法的一般过程是先估计混合模型的参数,计算图像中每点的后验概率,然后根据贝叶斯最小错误率准则对图像进行分割。根据MR图像的特点,提出了基于t-混合模型的大脑MR图像白质分割的算法,并取得了较好的实验结果。     

应用迭代四叉树的肝脏MR图像分割

磁共振（Magnetic Resonance,MR）图像的诊断是公认的确认肝脏有无肿瘤等器质性病变的金标准方法,因此肝脏的正确分割对计算机辅助诊断有非常重要的意义。由于脏器组织浸润和个体差异,在肝脏分割实现方法方面有一定难度,目前尚没有通用的医学分割方法。在既有研究的基础上,提出了基于四叉树的迭代分割算法,得到MR图像中肝脏的自动分割结果。实验分割结果表明这种方法的可行性和优势,并为后续的肿瘤提取奠定基础。     

A review of atlas-based segmentation for magnetic resonance brain images

Normal and abnormal brains can be segmented by registering the target image with an atlas. Here, an atlas is defined as the combination of an intensity image (template) and its segmented image (the atlas labels). After registering the atlas template and the target image, the atlas labels are propagated to the target image. We define this process as atlas-based segmentation. In recent years, researchers have investigated registration algorithms to match atlases to query subjects and also strategies for atlas construction. In this paper we present a review of the automated approaches for atlas-based segmentation of magnetic resonance brain images. We aim to point out the strengths and weaknesses of atlas-based methods and suggest new research directions. We use two different criteria to present the methods. First, we refer to the algorithms according to their atlas-based strategy: label propagation, multi-atlas methods, and probabilistic techniques. Subsequently, we classify the methods according to their medical target: the brain and its internal structures, tissue segmentation in healthy subjects, tissue segmentation in fetus, neonates and elderly subjects, and segmentation of damaged brains. A quantitative comparison of the results reported in the literature is also presented.     

MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的深度学习方法综述

磁共振成像（MRI）作为一种典型的非侵入式成像技术，可产生高质量的无损伤和无颅骨伪影的脑影像，为脑肿瘤的诊断和治疗提供更为全面的信息，是脑肿瘤诊疗的主要技术手段。MRI脑肿瘤自动分割利用计算机技术从多模态脑影像中自动将肿瘤区（坏死区、水肿区、非增强肿瘤区和增强肿瘤区）和正常组织区进行分割和标注，对于辅助脑肿瘤的诊疗具有重要作用。本文对MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的深度学习方法进行了总结与分析，给出了各类方法的基本思想、网络架构形式、代表性改进方案以及优缺点总结等，并给出了部分典型方法在BraTS（multimodal brain tumor segmentation）数据集上的性能表现与分析结果。通过对该领域研究方法进行综述，对现有基于深度学习的MRI脑肿瘤分割研究方法进行了梳理，作为新的发展方向，MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的深度学习方法较传统方法已取得明显的性能提升，已成为领域主流方法并持续展现出良好的发展前景，有助于进一步推动MRI脑肿瘤分割在临床诊疗上的应用。     

自适应模态融合双编码器MRI脑肿瘤分割网络

目的 评估肿瘤的恶性程度是临床诊断中的一项具有挑战性的任务。因脑肿瘤的磁共振成像呈现出不同的形状和大小,肿瘤的边缘模糊不清,导致肿瘤分割具有挑战性。为有效辅助临床医生进行肿瘤评估和诊断,提高脑肿瘤分割精度,提出一种自适应模态融合双编码器分割网络D3D-Net(double3DNet)。方法 本文提出的网络使用多个编码器和特定的特征融合的策略,采用双层编码器用于充分提取不同模态组合的图像特征,并在编码部分利用特定的融合策略将来自上下两个子编码器的特征信息充分融合,去除冗余特征。此外,在编码解码部分使用扩张多纤维模块在不增加计算开销的前提下捕获多尺度的图像特征,并引入注意力门控以保留细节信息。结果 采用BraTS2018(brain tumor segmentation 2018)、BraTS2019和BraTS2020数据集对D3D-Net网络进行训练和测试,并进行了消融实验。在BraTS2018数据集上,本模型在增强肿瘤、整个肿瘤、肿瘤核心的平均Dice值与3D U-Net相比分别提高了3.6%,1.0%,11.5%,与DMF-Net(dilatedmulti-fibernetwork...     

Adaptive pixon represented segmentation (APRS) for 3D MR brain images based on mean shift and Markov random fields

In this paper, we proposed an adaptive pixon represented segmentation (APRS) algorithm for 3D magnetic resonance (MR) brain images. Different from traditional method, an adaptive mean shift algorithm was adopted to adaptively smooth the query image and create a pixon-based image representation. Then K-means algorithm was employed to provide an initial segmentation by classifying the pixons in image into a predefined number of tissue classes. By using this segmentation as initialization, expectation-maximization (EM) iterations composed of bias correction, a priori digital brain atlas information, and Markov random field (MRF) segmentation were processed. Pixons were assigned with final labels when the algorithm converges. The adoption of bias correction and brain atlas made the current method more suitable for brain image segmentation than the previous pixon based segmentation algorithm. The proposed method was validated on both simulated normal brain images from BrainWeb and real brain images from the IBSR public dataset. Compared with some other popular MRI segmentation methods, the proposed method exhibited a higher degree of accuracy in segmenting both simulated and real 3D MRI brain data. The experimental results were numerically assessed using Dice and Tanimoto coefficients.     

基于图像片马尔科夫随机场的脑MR图像分割算法

传统的高斯混合模型（Gaussian mixture model,GMM）算法在图像分割中未考虑像素的空间信息,导致其对于噪声十分敏感.马尔科 夫随机场（Markov random field,MRF）模型通过像素类别标记的Gibbs分布先验概率引入了图像的空间信息,能较好地分割含有噪声的图 像,然而MRF模型的分割结果容易出现过平滑现象.为了解决上述缺陷,提出了一种新的基于图像片权重方法的马 尔科夫随机场图像分割模型,对邻域内的不同图像片根据相似度赋予不同的权重,使其在克服噪声影响的同时能 保持图像细节信息.同时,采用KL距离引入先验概率与后验概率关于熵的惩罚项,并对该惩罚项进行平滑,得到 最终的分割结果.实验结果表明,算法具有较强的自适应性,能够有效克服噪声对于分割结果的影响,并获得较高的分割精度.     

组卷积轻量级脑肿瘤分割网络

目的 脑肿瘤是一种严重威胁人类健康的疾病。利用计算机辅助诊断进行脑肿瘤分割对于患者的预后和治疗具有重要的临床意义。3D卷积神经网络因具有空间特征提取充分、分割效果好等优点,广泛应用于脑肿瘤分割领域。但由于其存在显存占用量巨大、对硬件资源要求较高等问题,通常需要在网络结构中做出折衷,以牺牲精度或训练速度的方式来适应给定的内存预算。基于以上问题,提出一种轻量级分割算法。方法 使用组卷积来代替常规卷积以显著降低显存占用,并通过多纤单元与通道混合单元增强各组间信息交流。为充分利用多显卡协同计算的优势,使用跨卡同步批量归一化以缓解3D卷积神经网络因批量值过小所导致的训练效果差等问题。最后提出一种加权混合损失函数,提高分割准确性的同时加快模型收敛速度。结果 使用脑肿瘤公开数据集BraTS2018进行测试,本文算法在肿瘤整体区、肿瘤核心区和肿瘤增强区的平均Dice值分别可达90.67%、85.06%和80.41%,参数量和计算量分别为3.2 M和20.51 G,与当前脑肿瘤分割最优算法相比,其精度分别仅相差0.01%、0.96%和1.32%,但在参数量和计算量方面分别降低至对比算法的1/12和1/73。结论 本文算法通过加权混合损失函数来提高稀疏类分类错误对模型的惩罚,有效平衡不同分割难度类别的训练强度,本文算法可在保持较高精度的同时显著降低计算消耗,为临床医师进行脑肿瘤分割提供有力参考。     

胎儿脑磁共振图像分割研究进展

医学影像是产前筛查、诊断、治疗引导和评估的重要工具,能有效避免胎儿脑的发育异常。近年来,磁共振成像在产前诊断中愈加重要,而实现自动、定量、精确地分析胎儿脑磁共振图像依赖于可靠的图像分割。因此,胎儿脑磁共振图像分割具有十分重要的临床意义与研究价值。由于胎儿图像中存在组织器官多、图像质量差及结构变化快等问题,胎儿脑磁共振图像的分割面临着巨大的困难与挑战。目前,尚未有文献对该领域的方法进行系统性的总结和分析,尤其是基于深度学习的方法。本文针对胎儿脑磁共振图像分割方法进行综述,首先,对胎儿脑磁共振图像的主要公开图谱/数据集进行详细说明;接着,对脑实质提取、组织分割和病灶分割方法进行全面的分类与分析;最后,对胎儿脑磁共振图像分割面临的挑战及未来的研究方向进行总结与展望。     

一种新的核磁共振图像偏场估计和分割算法研究*

在数字医学图像处理中,对于核磁共振图像而言,灰度不均匀性将严重影响算法的性能,因此必须进行偏场的估计以消除这种不均匀性。为此,提出了一种可以同时实现核磁共振图像偏场估计和图像分割的算法。使用最小均方误差准则构建目标函数,利用偏场的光滑特性和局部特性构建约束项来加速算法的收敛速度并提高算法的性能。实验结果表明,该算法能够正确地进行图像分割和偏场校正,同时约束项能够加快算法的收敛速度和提高算法的性能。     

Fast deformable matching of 3D images over multiscale nested subspaces. Application to atlas-based MRI segmentation

This paper presents a fast method to perform dense deformable matching of 3D images, applied to the registration of inter-subject brain MR images. To recover the complex morphological variations in neuroanatomy, the registration method uses a hierarchy of 3D deformations fields that are estimated, by minimizing a global energy function over a sequence of nested subspaces. The resulting deformable matching method shows low sensitivity to local minima and is able to track large non-linear deformations, with moderate computational load. The performances of the approach are assessed both on simulated 3D transformations and on a real data base of 3D brain MR images from different individuals. An application of the deformable image matching method to 3D atlas-based image segmentation is presented. This atlas-based segmentation is used at Strasbourg Hospital, in daily clinical applications, in order to extract regions of interest from 3D MR images of patients suffering from epilepsy.     

Brain tissue segmentation based on spatial information fusion by Dempster-Shafer theory

As a result of noise and intensity non-uniformity,automatic segmentation of brain tissue in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a challenging task.In this study a novel brain MRI segmentation approach is presented which employs Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) to perform information fusion.In the proposed method,fuzzy c-mean (FCM) is applied to separate features and then the outputs of FCM are interpreted as basic belief structures.The salient aspect of this paper is the interpretation of each FCM output as a belief structure with particular focal elements.The results of the proposed method are evaluated using Dice similarity and Accuracy indices.Qualitative and quantitative comparisons show that our method performs better and is more robust than the existing method.     

基于同一特征空间的多模态脑肿瘤分割方法

脑胶质瘤的分割依赖多种模态的核磁共振成像（MRI）的影像。基于卷积神经网络（CNN）的分割算法往往是在固定的多种模态影像上进行训练和测试,这忽略了模态数据缺失或增加问题。针对这个问题,提出了将不同模态的图像通过CNN映射到同一特征空间下并利用同一特征空间下的特征来分割肿瘤的方法。首先,不同模态的数据经过同一深度CNN提取特征;然后,将不同模态的特征连接起来,经过全连接层实现特征融合;最后,利用融合的特征实现脑肿瘤分割。模型采用BRATS2015数据集进行训练和测试,并使用Dice系数对模型进行验证。实验结果表明了所提模型能有效缓解数据缺失问题。同时,该模型较多模态联合的方法更加灵活,能够应对模态数据增加问题。     

多尺度判别条件生成对抗网络的前列腺MRI图像分割方法

目的 由MRI（magnetic resonance imaging）得到的影像具有分辨率高、软组织对比好等优点,使得医生能更精确地获得需要的信息,精确的前列腺MRI分割是计算机辅助检测和诊断算法的必要预处理阶段。因此临床上需要一种自动或半自动的前列腺分割算法,为各种各样的临床应用提供具有鲁棒性、高质量的结果。提出一种多尺度判别条件生成对抗网络对前列腺MRI图像进行自动分割以满足临床实践的需求。方法 提出的分割方法是基于条件生成对抗网络,由生成器和判别器两部分组成。生成器由类似U-Net的卷积神经网络组成,根据输入的MRI生成前列腺区域的掩膜;判别器是一个多尺度判别器,同一网络结构,输入图像尺寸不同的两个判别器。为了训练稳定,本文方法使用了特征匹配损失。在网络训练过程中使用对抗训练机制迭代地优化生成器和判别器,直至判别器和生成器同时收敛为止。训练好的生成器即可完成前列腺MRI分割。结果 实验数据来自PROMISE12前列腺分割比赛和安徽医科大学第一附属医院,以Dice相似性系数和Hausdorff距离作为评价指标,本文算法的Dice相似性系数为88.9%,Hausdorff距离为5.3 mm,与U-Net、DSCNN（deeply-supervised convolutional neured network）等方法相比,本文算法分割更准确,鲁棒性更高。在测试阶段,每幅图像仅需不到1 s的时间即可完成分割,超出了专门医生的分割速度。结论 提出了一种多尺度判别条件生成对抗网络来分割前列腺,从定量和定性分析可以看出本文算法的有效性,能够准确地对前列腺进行分割,达到了实时分割要求,符合临床诊断和治疗需求。