Automatic pharynx and larynx cancer segmentation framework (PLCSF) on contrast enhanced MR images

A novel and effective pharynx and larynx cancer segmentation framework (PLCSF) is presented for automatic base of tongue and larynx cancer segmentation from gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted magnetic resonance images (MRI). The aim of the proposed PLCSF is to assist clinicians in radiotherapy treatment planning. The initial processing of MRI data in PLCSF includes cropping of region of interest; reduction of artefacts and detection of the throat region for the location prior. Further, modified fuzzy c-means clustering is developed to robustly separate candidate cancer pixels from other tissue types. In addition, region-based level set method is evolved to ensure spatial smoothness for the final segmentation boundary after noise removal using non-linear and morphological filtering. Validation study of PLCSF on 102 axial MRI slices demonstrate mean dice similarity coefficient of 0.79 and mean modified Hausdorff distance of 2.2 mm when compared with manual segmentations. Comparison of PLCSF with other algorithms validates the robustness of the PLCSF. Inter- and intra-variability calculations from manual segmentations suggest that PLCSF can help to reduce the human subjectivity

Segmentation of head and neck tumours using modified U-net

A new neural network for automatic head and neck cancer (HNC) segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is presented. The proposed neural network is based on U-net, which combines features from different resolutions to achieve end-to-end locating and segmentation of medical images. In this work, the dilated convolution is introduced into U-net, to obtain larger receptive field so that extract multi-scale features. Also, this network uses Dice loss to reduce the imbalance between classes. The proposed algorithm is trained and tested on real MRI data. The cross-validation results show that the new network outperformed the original Unet by 5% (Dice score) on head and neck tumour segmentation

Automatic 3D segmentation of MRI data for detection of head and neck cancerous lymph nodes

A novel algorithm for automatic 3D segmentation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data for detection of head and neck cancerous lymph nodes (LN)) is presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm pre-processes the MRI data slices to enhance quality and reduce artefacts. A modified Fuzzy c-mean process is performed through all slices, followed by a probability map which refines the clustering results, to detect the approximate position of cancerous lymph nodes. Fourier interpolation is applied to create an isotropic 3D MRI volume. A new 3D level set method segments the tumour from the interpolated MRI volume. The proposed algorithm is tested on synthetic and real MRI data. The results show that the novel cancerous lymph nodes 3D volume extraction algorithm has over 0.9 Dice similarity score on synthetic data and 0.7 on real MRI data. The F-measure is 0.92 on synthetic data and 0.75 on real data

Automatic 3D detection and segmentation of head and neck cancer from MRI data

A novel algorithm for automatic head and neck 3D tumour segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is presented. The proposed algorithm pre-processes the MRI data slices to enhance quality and reduce artefacts. An intensity standardisation process is performed between slices, followed by cancer region segmentation of central slice, to get the correct intensity range and rough location of tumour regions. Fourier interpolation is applied to create isotropic 3D MR I volume. A new location-constrained 3D level set method segments the tumour from the interpolated MRI volume. The proposed algorithm is tested on real MRI data. The results show that the novel 3D tumour volume extraction algorithm has an improved dice score and F-measure when compared to the previous 2D and 3D segmentation method

An Accurate Ensemble Classifier for Medical Volume Analysis: Phantom and Clinical PET Study.

The predominant application of positron emission tomography (PET) in the field of oncology and radiotherapy and the significance of medical imaging research have led to an urgent need for effective approaches to PET volume analysis and the development of accurate and robust volume analysis techniques to support oncologists in their clinical practice, including diagnosis, arrangement of appropriate radiotherapy treatment, and evaluation of patients’ response to therapy. This paper proposes an efficient optimized ensemble classifier to tackle the problem of analysis of squamous cell carcinoma in patient PET volumes. This optimized classifier is based on an artificial neural network (ANN), fuzzy C-means (FCM), an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), K-means, and a self-organizing map (SOM). Four ensemble classifier machines are proposed in this study. The first three are built using a voting approach, an averaging technique, and weighted averaging, respectively. The fourth, novel ensemble classifier machine is based on the combination of a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach and weighted averaging. Experimental National Electrical Manufacturers Association and International Electrotechnical Commission (NEMA IEC) body phantom and clinical PET studies of participants with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma are used for the evaluation of the proposed approach. Superior results were achieved using the new optimized ensemble classifier when compared with the results from the investigated classifiers and the non-optimized ensemble classifiers. The proposed approach identified the region of interest class (tumor) with an average accuracy of 98.11% in clinical datasets of patients with laryngeal tumors. This system supports the expertise of clinicians in PET tumor analysis.King Abdulaziz Universit