Attention Guided 3D U-Net for KiTS19

We use a two-stage 3d U-Net model to predict the multi channels segmentations from coarse to fine. The second stage is guided by the predictions from the first stage. 1 Method We proposed a two stages method to segment CT image from coarse to fine. The two stages are trained with different learning scope and are assigned with different learning missions. 1.1 Stage 1 – Coarse stage Data preprocess. Firstly, we downscale the training data to a normal shape, in order to make sure the model can take a whole image at once. All the images and segmentations are downscale to 128*128*32 (height*width*depth). The segmentation files are transformed to 3-channels arrays, in which the channels-wise pixel values represent kidneys, tumors and the background (without kidneys and tumors) in order. Training. We train the standard 3D U-Net follow with a softmax layer. While training, we apply some data augmentation to the training data, including normalize, random contrast, random flip and random rotate. We input all the 210 cases training data and train the model to regress the multi-channel segmentations. We apply with pytorch, and the learning rate is 0.1 which divide 0.1 in 300000 epochs and 500000 epochs. We use the Binary Cross Entropy Loss as loss function. Predicting. The 90 cases testing images are preprocessed the same with the training images then input to the trained model. The channel-wise predictions are scaled back the original shape. We take the first 2 channels of the predictions, represent as the segmentation of kidneys and tumors, then package as the .nii.gz files

Evaluation and comparison of accurate automated spinal curvature estimation algorithms with spinal anterior-posterior X-Ray images: The AASCE2019 challenge

Scoliosis is a common medical condition, which occurs most often during the growth spurt just before puberty. Untreated Scoliosis may cause long-term sequelae. Therefore, accurate automated quantitative estimation of spinal curvature is an important task for the clinical evaluation and treatment planning of Scoliosis. A couple of attempts have been made for automated Cobb angle estimation on single-view x-rays. It is very challenging to achieve a highly accurate automated estimation of Cobb angles because it is difficult to utilize x-rays efficiently. With the idea of developing methods for accurate automated spinal curvature estimation, AASCE2019 challenge provides spinal anterior-posterior x-ray images with manual labels for training and testing the participating methods. We review eight top-ranked methods from 12 teams. Experimental results show that overall the best performing method achieved a symmetric mean absolute percentage (SMAPE) of 21.71%. Limitations and possible future directions are also described in the paper. We hope the dataset in AASCE2019 and this paper could provide insights into quantitative measurement of the spine

Evaluation and comparison of accurate automated spinal curvature estimation algorithms with spinal anterior-posterior X-Ray images

Scoliosis is a common medical condition, which occurs most often during the growth spurt just before puberty. Untreated Scoliosis may cause long-term sequelae. Therefore, accurate automated quantitative estimation of spinal curvature is an important task for the clinical evaluation and treatment planning of Scoliosis. A couple of attempts have been made for automated Cobb angle estimation on single-view x-rays. It is very challenging to achieve a highly accurate automated estimation of Cobb angles because it is difficult to utilize x-rays efficiently. With the idea of developing methods for accurate automated spinal curvature estimation, AASCE2019 challenge provides spinal anterior-posterior x-ray images with manual labels for training and testing the participating methods. We review eight top-ranked methods from 12 teams. Experimental results show that overall the best performing method achieved a symmetric mean absolute percentage (SMAPE) of 21.71%. Limitations and possible future directions are also described in the paper. We hope the dataset in AASCE2019 and this paper could provide insights into quantitative measurement of the spine.</p