1. Machine-assisted interpolation algorithm for semi-automated segmentation of highly deformable organs
- Author
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P Chow, Eric D. Morris, James Lamb, Yasin Abdulkadir, and Dishane C. Luximon
- Subjects
Neural Networks ,Computer science ,medicine.medical_treatment ,Image Processing ,Brachytherapy ,Oncology and Carcinogenesis ,Biomedical Engineering ,Bioengineering ,Linear interpolation ,Convolutional neural network ,radiation therapy ,Article ,Computer ,Computer-Assisted ,Robustness (computer science) ,Clinical Research ,Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ,medicine ,Humans ,Segmentation ,Closing (morphology) ,Tomography ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,Radiotherapy ,segmentation ,deep learning ,Magnetic resonance imaging ,General Medicine ,Magnetic Resonance Imaging ,X-Ray Computed ,Other Physical Sciences ,Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging ,Image-Guided ,Biomedical Imaging ,Neural Networks, Computer ,Tomography, X-Ray Computed ,Digestive Diseases ,Algorithm ,Radiotherapy, Image-Guided ,Interpolation - Abstract
PurposeAccurate and robust auto-segmentation of highly deformable organs (HDOs), for example, stomach or bowel, remains an outstanding problem due to these organs' frequent and large anatomical variations. Yet, time-consuming manual segmentation of these organs presents a particular challenge to time-limited modern radiotherapy techniques such as on-line adaptive radiotherapy and high-dose-rate brachytherapy. We propose a machine-assisted interpolation (MAI) that uses prior information in the form of sparse manual delineations to facilitate rapid, accurate segmentation of the stomach from low field magnetic resonance images (MRI) and the bowel from computed tomography (CT) images.MethodsStomach MR images from 116 patients undergoing 0.35T MRI-guided abdominal radiotherapy and bowel CT images from 120 patients undergoing high dose rate pelvic brachytherapy treatment were collected. For each patient volume, the manual delineation of the HDO was extracted from every 8th slice. These manually drawn contours were first interpolated to obtain an initial estimate of the HDO contour. A two-channel 64×64pixel patch-based convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained to localize the position of the organ's boundary on each slice within a five-pixel wide road using the image and interpolated contour estimate. This boundary prediction was then input, in conjunction with the image, to an organ closing CNN which output the final organ segmentation. A Dense-UNet architecture was used for both networks. The MAI algorithm was separately trained for the stomach segmentation and the bowel segmentation. Algorithm performance was compared against linear interpolation (LI) alone and against fully automated segmentation (FAS) using a Dense-UNet trained on the same datasets. The Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and mean surface distance (MSD) metrics were used to compare the predictions from the three methods. Statistically significance was tested using Student's t test.ResultsFor the stomach segmentation, the mean DSC from MAI (0.91 ± 0.02) was 5.0% and 10.0% higher as compared to LI and FAS, respectively. The average MSD from MAI (0.77 ± 0.25mm) was 0.54 and 3.19mm lower compared to the two other methods. Only 7% of MAI stomach predictions resulted in a DSC 
- Published
- 2022