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Zhu J, Bolsterlee B, Chow BVY, Song Y, Meijering E. Hybrid dual mean-teacher network with double-uncertainty guidance for semi-supervised segmentation of magnetic resonance images. Comput Med Imaging Graph 2024; 115:102383. [PMID: 38643551 DOI: 10.1016/j.compmedimag.2024.102383] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2023] [Revised: 03/26/2024] [Accepted: 04/14/2024] [Indexed: 04/23/2024]
Abstract
Semi-supervised learning has made significant progress in medical image segmentation. However, existing methods primarily utilize information from a single dimensionality, resulting in sub-optimal performance on challenging magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data with multiple segmentation objects and anisotropic resolution. To address this issue, we present a Hybrid Dual Mean-Teacher (HD-Teacher) model with hybrid, semi-supervised, and multi-task learning to achieve effective semi-supervised segmentation. HD-Teacher employs a 2D and a 3D mean-teacher network to produce segmentation labels and signed distance fields from the hybrid information captured in both dimensionalities. This hybrid mechanism allows HD-Teacher to utilize features from 2D, 3D, or both dimensions as needed. Outputs from 2D and 3D teacher models are dynamically combined based on confidence scores, forming a single hybrid prediction with estimated uncertainty. We propose a hybrid regularization module to encourage both student models to produce results close to the uncertainty-weighted hybrid prediction to further improve their feature extraction capability. Extensive experiments of binary and multi-class segmentation conducted on three MRI datasets demonstrated that the proposed framework could (1) significantly outperform state-of-the-art semi-supervised methods (2) surpass a fully-supervised VNet trained on substantially more annotated data, and (3) perform on par with human raters on muscle and bone segmentation task. Code will be available at https://github.com/ThisGame42/Hybrid-Teacher.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiayi Zhu
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia.
| | - Bart Bolsterlee
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia; Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Brian V Y Chow
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia; School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Yang Song
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Erik Meijering
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
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Casali N, Scalco E, Taccogna MG, Lauretani F, Porcelli S, Ciuni A, Mastropietro A, Rizzo G. Positional contrastive learning for improved thigh muscle segmentation in MR images. NMR IN BIOMEDICINE 2024:e5197. [PMID: 38822595 DOI: 10.1002/nbm.5197] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/28/2023] [Revised: 05/02/2024] [Accepted: 05/13/2024] [Indexed: 06/03/2024]
Abstract
The accurate segmentation of individual muscles is essential for quantitative MRI analysis of thigh images. Deep learning methods have achieved state-of-the-art results in segmentation, but they require large numbers of labeled data to perform well. However, labeling individual thigh muscles slice by slice for numerous volumes is a laborious and time-consuming task, which limits the availability of annotated datasets. To address this challenge, self-supervised learning (SSL) emerges as a promising technique to enhance model performance by pretraining the model on unlabeled data. A recent approach, called positional contrastive learning, exploits the information given by the axial position of the slices to learn features transferable on the segmentation task. The aim of this work was to propose positional contrastive SSL for the segmentation of individual thigh muscles from MRI acquisitions in a population of elderly healthy subjects and to evaluate it on different levels of limited annotated data. An unlabeled dataset of 72 T1w MRI thigh acquisitions was available for SSL pretraining, while a labeled dataset of 52 volumes was employed for the final segmentation task, split into training and test sets. The effectiveness of SSL pretraining to fine-tune a U-Net architecture for thigh muscle segmentation was compared with that of a randomly initialized model (RND), considering an increasing number of annotated volumes (S = 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40). Our results demonstrated that SSL yields substantial improvements in Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) when using a very limited number of labeled volumes (e.g., forS $$ S $$ = 1, DSC 0.631 versus 0.530 for SSL and RND, respectively). Moreover, enhancements are achievable even when utilizing the full number of labeled subjects, with DSC = 0.927 for SSL and 0.924 for RND. In conclusion, positional contrastive SSL was effective in obtaining more accurate thigh muscle segmentation, even with a very low number of labeled data, with a potential impact of speeding up the annotation process in clinics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicola Casali
- Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems for Advanced Manufacturing, National Research Council, Milan, Italy
- Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
| | - Elisa Scalco
- Institute of Biomedical Technologies, National Research Council, Segrate, Italy
| | | | - Fulvio Lauretani
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, Parma, Italy
- Geriatric Clinic Unit, Geriatric-Rehabilitation Department, Parma University Hospital, Parma, Italy
| | - Simone Porcelli
- Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
| | - Andrea Ciuni
- Department of Radiologic Sciences, Parma University Hospital, Parma, Italy
| | - Alfonso Mastropietro
- Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems for Advanced Manufacturing, National Research Council, Milan, Italy
| | - Giovanna Rizzo
- Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems for Advanced Manufacturing, National Research Council, Milan, Italy
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Scalco E, Pozzi S, Rizzo G, Lanzarone E. Uncertainty quantification in multi-class segmentation: Comparison between Bayesian and non-Bayesian approaches in a clinical perspective. Med Phys 2024. [PMID: 38808956 DOI: 10.1002/mp.17189] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2024] [Revised: 04/17/2024] [Accepted: 05/12/2024] [Indexed: 05/30/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Automatic segmentation techniques based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are widely adopted to automatically identify any structure of interest from a medical image, as they are not time consuming and not subject to high intra- and inter-operator variability. However, the adoption of these approaches in clinical practice is slowed down by some factors, such as the difficulty in providing an accurate quantification of their uncertainty. PURPOSE This work aims to evaluate the uncertainty quantification provided by two Bayesian and two non-Bayesian approaches for a multi-class segmentation problem, and to compare the risk propensity among these approaches, considering CT images of patients affected by renal cancer (RC). METHODS Four uncertainty quantification approaches were implemented in this work, based on a benchmark CNN currently employed in medical image segmentation: two Bayesian CNNs with different regularizations (Dropout and DropConnect), named BDR and BDC, an ensemble method (Ens) and a test-time augmentation (TTA) method. They were compared in terms of segmentation accuracy, using the Dice score, uncertainty quantification, using the ratio of correct-certain pixels (RCC) and incorrect-uncertain pixels (RIU), and with respect to inter-observer variability in manual segmentation. They were trained with the Kidney and Kidney Tumor Segmentation Challenge launched in 2021 (Kits21), for which multi-class segmentations of kidney, RC, and cyst on 300 CT volumes are available. Moreover, they were tested considering this and other two public renal CT datasets. RESULTS Accuracy results achieved large differences across the structures of interest for all approaches, with an average Dice score of 0.92, 0.58, and 0.21 for kidney, tumor, and cyst, respectively. In terms of uncertainties, TTA provided the highest uncertainty, followed by Ens and BDC, whereas BDR provided the lowest, and minimized the number of incorrect certain pixels worse than the other approaches. Again, large differences were seen across the three structures in terms of RCC and RIU. These metrics were associated with different risk propensity, as BDR was the most risk-taking approach, able to provide higher accuracy in its prediction, but failing to assign uncertainty on incorrect segmentation in every case. The other three approaches were more conservative, providing large uncertainty regions, with the drawback of giving alert also on correct areas. Finally, the analysis of the inter-observer segmentation variability showed a significant variation among the four approaches on the external dataset, with BDR reporting the lowest agreement (Dice = 0.82), and TTA obtaining the highest score (Dice = 0.94). CONCLUSIONS Our outcomes highlight the importance of quantifying the segmentation uncertainty and that decision-makers can choose the approach most in line with the risk propensity degree required by the application and their policy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elisa Scalco
- Institute of Biomedical Technologies (ITB), National Research Council (CNR), Segrate, Milan, Italy
| | - Silvia Pozzi
- Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy
| | - Giovanna Rizzo
- Institute Of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems (STIIMA), National Research Council (CNR), Milan, Italy
| | - Ettore Lanzarone
- Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy
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Henson WH, Li X, Lin Z, Guo L, Mazzá C, Dall’Ara E. Automatic segmentation of lower limb muscles from MR images of post-menopausal women based on deep learning and data augmentation. PLoS One 2024; 19:e0299099. [PMID: 38564618 PMCID: PMC10986986 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299099] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2023] [Accepted: 02/05/2024] [Indexed: 04/04/2024] Open
Abstract
Individual muscle segmentation is the process of partitioning medical images into regions representing each muscle. It can be used to isolate spatially structured quantitative muscle characteristics, such as volume, geometry, and the level of fat infiltration. These features are pivotal to measuring the state of muscle functional health and in tracking the response of the body to musculoskeletal and neuromusculoskeletal disorders. The gold standard approach to perform muscle segmentation requires manual processing of large numbers of images and is associated with significant operator repeatability issues and high time requirements. Deep learning-based techniques have been recently suggested to be capable of automating the process, which would catalyse research into the effects of musculoskeletal disorders on the muscular system. In this study, three convolutional neural networks were explored in their capacity to automatically segment twenty-three lower limb muscles from the hips, thigh, and calves from magnetic resonance images. The three neural networks (UNet, Attention UNet, and a novel Spatial Channel UNet) were trained independently with augmented images to segment 6 subjects and were able to segment the muscles with an average Relative Volume Error (RVE) between -8.6% and 2.9%, average Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) between 0.70 and 0.84, and average Hausdorff Distance (HD) between 12.2 and 46.5 mm, with performance dependent on both the subject and the network used. The trained convolutional neural networks designed, and data used in this study are openly available for use, either through re-training for other medical images, or application to automatically segment new T1-weighted lower limb magnetic resonance images captured with similar acquisition parameters.
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Affiliation(s)
- William H. Henson
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Xinshan Li
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Zhicheng Lin
- INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Lingzhong Guo
- INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Claudia Mazzá
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Enrico Dall’Ara
- INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Division of Clinical Medicine, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
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Chow BVY, Morgan C, Rae C, Warton DI, Novak I, Davies S, Lancaster A, Popovic GC, Rizzo RRN, Rizzo CY, Kyriagis M, Herbert RD, Bolsterlee B. Human lower leg muscles grow asynchronously. J Anat 2024; 244:476-485. [PMID: 37917014 PMCID: PMC10862152 DOI: 10.1111/joa.13967] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/04/2023] [Revised: 09/08/2023] [Accepted: 10/16/2023] [Indexed: 11/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Muscle volume must increase substantially during childhood growth to generate the power required to propel the growing body. One unresolved but fundamental question about childhood muscle growth is whether muscles grow at equal rates; that is, if muscles grow in synchrony with each other. In this study, we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and advances in artificial intelligence methods (deep learning) for medical image segmentation to investigate whether human lower leg muscles grow in synchrony. Muscle volumes were measured in 10 lower leg muscles in 208 typically developing children (eight infants aged less than 3 months and 200 children aged 5 to 15 years). We tested the hypothesis that human lower leg muscles grow synchronously by investigating whether the volume of individual lower leg muscles, expressed as a proportion of total lower leg muscle volume, remains constant with age. There were substantial age-related changes in the relative volume of most muscles in both boys and girls (p < 0.001). This was most evident between birth and five years of age but was still evident after five years. The medial gastrocnemius and soleus muscles, the largest muscles in infancy, grew faster than other muscles in the first five years. The findings demonstrate that muscles in the human lower leg grow asynchronously. This finding may assist early detection of atypical growth and allow targeted muscle-specific interventions to improve the quality of life, particularly for children with neuromotor conditions such as cerebral palsy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brian V. Y. Chow
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Catherine Morgan
- Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute, Discipline of Child and Adolescent HealthThe University of SydneySydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Caroline Rae
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- School of Psychology, University of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - David I. Warton
- School of Mathematics and StatisticsUniversity of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- Evolution & Ecology Research CentreUniversity of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Iona Novak
- Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute, Discipline of Child and Adolescent HealthThe University of SydneySydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- Faculty of Medicine and HealthThe University of SydneySydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Suzanne Davies
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Ann Lancaster
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Gordana C. Popovic
- Stats Central, Mark Wainwright Analytical CentreUniversity of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Rodrigo R. N. Rizzo
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Claudia Y. Rizzo
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Maria Kyriagis
- Rehab2Kids, Sydney Children's HospitalSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Robert D. Herbert
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
| | - Bart Bolsterlee
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA)SydneyNew South WalesAustralia
- Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South WalesSydneyNew South WalesAustralia
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Lin Z, Henson WH, Dowling L, Walsh J, Dall’Ara E, Guo L. Automatic segmentation of skeletal muscles from MR images using modified U-Net and a novel data augmentation approach. Front Bioeng Biotechnol 2024; 12:1355735. [PMID: 38456001 PMCID: PMC10919285 DOI: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1355735] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2023] [Accepted: 02/05/2024] [Indexed: 03/09/2024] Open
Abstract
Rapid and accurate muscle segmentation is essential for the diagnosis and monitoring of many musculoskeletal diseases. As gold standard, manual annotation suffers from intensive labor and high inter-operator reproducibility errors. In this study, deep learning (DL) based automatic muscle segmentation from MR scans is investigated for post-menopausal women, who normally experience a decline in muscle volume. The performance of four Deep Learning (DL) models was evaluated: U-Net and UNet++ and two modified U-Net networks, which combined feature fusion and attention mechanisms (Feature-Fusion-UNet, FFU, and Attention-Feature-Fusion-UNet, AFFU). The models were tested for automatic segmentation of 16-lower limb muscles from MRI scans of two cohorts of post-menopausal women (11 subjects in PMW-1, 8 subjects in PMW-2; from two different studies so considered independent datasets) and 10 obese post-menopausal women (PMW-OB). Furthermore, a novel data augmentation approach is proposed to enlarge the training dataset. The results were assessed and compared by using the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), relative volume error (RVE), and Hausdorff distance (HD). The best performance among all four DL models was achieved by AFFU (PMW-1: DSC 0.828 ± 0.079, 1-RVE 0.859 ± 0.122, HD 29.9 mm ± 26.5 mm; PMW-2: DSC 0.833 ± 0.065, 1-RVE 0.873 ± 0.105, HD 25.9 mm ± 27.9 mm; PMW-OB: DSC 0.862 ± 0.048, 1-RVE 0.919 ± 0.076, HD 34.8 mm ± 46.8 mm). Furthermore, the augmentation of data significantly improved the DSC scores of U-Net and AFFU for all 16 tested muscles (between 0.23% and 2.17% (DSC), 1.6%-1.93% (1-RVE), and 9.6%-19.8% (HD) improvement). These findings highlight the feasibility of utilizing DL models for automatic segmentation of muscles in post-menopausal women and indicate that the proposed augmentation method can enhance the performance of models trained on small datasets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhicheng Lin
- Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - William H. Henson
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Lisa Dowling
- Faculty of Health, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Jennifer Walsh
- Faculty of Health, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Enrico Dall’Ara
- Department of Oncology and Metabolism, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Insigneo, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Lingzhong Guo
- Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Insigneo, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
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Zhen T, Fang J, Hu D, Ruan M, Wang L, Fan S, Shen Q. Risk stratification by nomogram of deep learning radiomics based on multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging in knee meniscus injury. INTERNATIONAL ORTHOPAEDICS 2023; 47:2497-2505. [PMID: 37386277 DOI: 10.1007/s00264-023-05875-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2023] [Accepted: 06/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/01/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE To construct and validate a nomogram model that integrated deep learning radiomic features based on multiparametric MRI and clinical features for risk stratification of meniscus injury. METHODS A total of 167 knee MR images were collected from two institutions. All patients were classified into two groups based on the MR diagnostic criteria proposed by Stoller et al. The automatic meniscus segmentation model was constructed through V-net. LASSO regression was performed to extract the optimal features correlated to risk stratification. A nomogram model was constructed by combining the Radscore and clinical features. The performance of the models was evaluated by ROC analysis and calibration curve. Subsequently, the model was simulated by junior doctors in order to test its practical application effect. RESULTS The Dice similarity coefficients of automatic meniscus segmentation models were all over 0.8. Eight optimal features, identified by LASSO regression, were employed to calculate the Radscore. The combined model showed a better performance in both the training cohort (AUC = 0.90, 95%CI: 0.84-0.95) and the validation cohort (AUC = 0.84, 95%CI: 0.72-0.93). The calibration curve indicated a better accuracy of the combined model than either the Radscore or clinical model alone. The simulation results showed that the diagnostic accuracy of junior doctors increased from 74.9 to 86.2% after using the model. CONCLUSION Deep learning V-net demonstrated great performance in automatic meniscus segmentation of the knee joint. It was reliable for stratifying the risk of meniscus injury of the knee by nomogram which integrated the Radscores and clinical features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tao Zhen
- Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 261, Huansha Road, Zhejiang, 310006, Hangzhou, China
| | - Jing Fang
- Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Hangzhou, 310006, China
| | - Dacheng Hu
- Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 261, Huansha Road, Zhejiang, 310006, Hangzhou, China
| | - Mei Ruan
- Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 261, Huansha Road, Zhejiang, 310006, Hangzhou, China
| | - Luoyu Wang
- Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 261, Huansha Road, Zhejiang, 310006, Hangzhou, China
| | - Sandra Fan
- Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 261, Huansha Road, Zhejiang, 310006, Hangzhou, China
| | - Qijun Shen
- Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 261, Huansha Road, Zhejiang, 310006, Hangzhou, China.
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Chow BVY, Morgan C, Rae C, Novak I, Davies S, Herbert RD, Bolsterlee B. Three-dimensional skeletal muscle architecture in the lower legs of living human infants. J Biomech 2023; 155:111661. [PMID: 37290180 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2023.111661] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2023] [Revised: 04/01/2023] [Accepted: 05/23/2023] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Little is known about the skeletal muscle architecture of living humans at birth. In this study, we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the volumes of ten muscle groups in the lower legs of eight human infants aged less than three months. We then combined MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to provide detailed, high-resolution reconstructions and measurements of moment arms, fascicle lengths, physiological cross-sectional areas (PCSAs), pennation angles and diffusion parameters of the medial (MG) and lateral gastrocnemius (LG) muscles. On average, the total lower leg muscle volume was 29.2 cm3. The largest muscle was the soleus muscle with a mean volume of 6.5 cm3. Compared to the LG muscles, the MG muscles had, on average, greater volumes (by ∼35%) and greater PCSAs (by ∼63%) but similar ankle-to-knee moment arm ratios (∼0.1 difference), fascicle lengths (∼5.7 mm difference) and pennation angles (∼2.7° difference). The MG data were compared with data previously collected from adults. The MG muscles of adults had, on average, a 63-fold greater volume, a 36-fold greater PCSA, and 1.7-fold greater fascicle length. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using MRI and DTI to reconstruct the three-dimensional architecture of skeletal muscles in living human infants. It is shown that, between infancy and adulthood, MG muscle fascicles grow primarily in cross-section rather than in length.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brian V Y Chow
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Sydney, NSW, Australia; School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Catherine Morgan
- Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute, Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Caroline Rae
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Sydney, NSW, Australia; School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Iona Novak
- Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Institute, Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Suzanne Davies
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Robert D Herbert
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Sydney, NSW, Australia; School of Biomedical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Bart Bolsterlee
- Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), Sydney, NSW, Australia; Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
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9
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Turner A, Hayes S, Sharkey D. The Classification of Movement in Infants for the Autonomous Monitoring of Neurological Development. SENSORS (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2023; 23:4800. [PMID: 37430717 DOI: 10.3390/s23104800] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2023] [Revised: 05/07/2023] [Accepted: 05/12/2023] [Indexed: 07/12/2023]
Abstract
Neurodevelopmental delay following extremely preterm birth or birth asphyxia is common but diagnosis is often delayed as early milder signs are not recognised by parents or clinicians. Early interventions have been shown to improve outcomes. Automation of diagnosis and monitoring of neurological disorders using non-invasive, cost effective methods within a patient's home could improve accessibility to testing. Furthermore, said testing could be conducted over a longer period, enabling greater confidence in diagnoses, due to increased data availability. This work proposes a new method to assess the movements in children. Twelve parent and infant participants were recruited (children aged between 3 and 12 months). Approximately 25 min 2D video recordings of the infants organically playing with toys were captured. A combination of deep learning and 2D pose estimation algorithms were used to classify the movements in relation to the children's dexterity and position when interacting with a toy. The results demonstrate the possibility of capturing and classifying children's complexity of movements when interacting with toys as well as their posture. Such classifications and the movement features could assist practitioners to accurately diagnose impaired or delayed movement development in a timely fashion as well as facilitating treatment monitoring.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Turner
- Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK
| | - Stephen Hayes
- Department of Engineering, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG4 2EA, UK
| | - Don Sharkey
- Department of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
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Bonaldi L, Pretto A, Pirri C, Uccheddu F, Fontanella CG, Stecco C. Deep Learning-Based Medical Images Segmentation of Musculoskeletal Anatomical Structures: A Survey of Bottlenecks and Strategies. Bioengineering (Basel) 2023; 10:bioengineering10020137. [PMID: 36829631 PMCID: PMC9952222 DOI: 10.3390/bioengineering10020137] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/25/2022] [Revised: 01/13/2023] [Accepted: 01/17/2023] [Indexed: 01/22/2023] Open
Abstract
By leveraging the recent development of artificial intelligence algorithms, several medical sectors have benefited from using automatic segmentation tools from bioimaging to segment anatomical structures. Segmentation of the musculoskeletal system is key for studying alterations in anatomical tissue and supporting medical interventions. The clinical use of such tools requires an understanding of the proper method for interpreting data and evaluating their performance. The current systematic review aims to present the common bottlenecks for musculoskeletal structures analysis (e.g., small sample size, data inhomogeneity) and the related strategies utilized by different authors. A search was performed using the PUBMED database with the following keywords: deep learning, musculoskeletal system, segmentation. A total of 140 articles published up until February 2022 were obtained and analyzed according to the PRISMA framework in terms of anatomical structures, bioimaging techniques, pre/post-processing operations, training/validation/testing subset creation, network architecture, loss functions, performance indicators and so on. Several common trends emerged from this survey; however, the different methods need to be compared and discussed based on each specific case study (anatomical region, medical imaging acquisition setting, study population, etc.). These findings can be used to guide clinicians (as end users) to better understand the potential benefits and limitations of these tools.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lorenza Bonaldi
- Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, Via F. Marzolo 9, 35131 Padova, Italy
| | - Andrea Pretto
- Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, Via Venezia 1, 35121 Padova, Italy
| | - Carmelo Pirri
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Via A. Gabelli 65, 35121 Padova, Italy
| | - Francesca Uccheddu
- Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, Via Venezia 1, 35121 Padova, Italy
- Centre for Mechanics of Biological Materials (CMBM), University of Padova, Via F. Marzolo 9, 35131 Padova, Italy
| | - Chiara Giulia Fontanella
- Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, Via Venezia 1, 35121 Padova, Italy
- Centre for Mechanics of Biological Materials (CMBM), University of Padova, Via F. Marzolo 9, 35131 Padova, Italy
- Correspondence: ; Tel.: +39-049-8276754
| | - Carla Stecco
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, Via A. Gabelli 65, 35121 Padova, Italy
- Centre for Mechanics of Biological Materials (CMBM), University of Padova, Via F. Marzolo 9, 35131 Padova, Italy
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Yang Q, Yu X, Lee HH, Tang Y, Bao S, Gravenstein KS, Moore AZ, Makrogiannis S, Ferrucci L, Landman BA. Label efficient segmentation of single slice thigh CT with two-stage pseudo labels. J Med Imaging (Bellingham) 2022; 9:052405. [PMID: 35607409 PMCID: PMC9118142 DOI: 10.1117/1.jmi.9.5.052405] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2021] [Accepted: 05/02/2022] [Indexed: 07/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Purpose: Muscle, bone, and fat segmentation from thigh images is essential for quantifying body composition. Voxelwise image segmentation enables quantification of tissue properties including area, intensity, and texture. Deep learning approaches have had substantial success in medical image segmentation, but they typically require a significant amount of data. Due to the high cost of manual annotation, training deep learning models with limited human label data is desirable, but it is a challenging problem. Approach: Inspired by transfer learning, we proposed a two-stage deep learning pipeline to address the thigh and lower leg segmentation issue. We studied three datasets, 3022 thigh slices and 8939 lower leg slices from the BLSA dataset and 121 thigh slices from the GESTALT study. First, we generated pseudo labels for thigh based on approximate handcrafted approaches using CT intensity and anatomical morphology. Then, those pseudo labels were fed into deep neural networks to train models from scratch. Finally, the first stage model was loaded as the initialization and fine-tuned with a more limited set of expert human labels of the thigh. Results: We evaluated the performance of this framework on 73 thigh CT images and obtained an average Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.927 across muscle, internal bone, cortical bone, subcutaneous fat, and intermuscular fat. To test the generalizability of the proposed framework, we applied the model on lower leg images and obtained an average DSC of 0.823. Conclusions: Approximated handcrafted pseudo labels can build a good initialization for deep neural networks, which can help to reduce the need for, and make full use of, human expert labeled data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qi Yang
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Computer Science, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
| | - Xin Yu
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Computer Science, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
| | - Ho Hin Lee
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Computer Science, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
| | - Yucheng Tang
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
| | - Shunxing Bao
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Computer Science, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
| | | | - Ann Zenobia Moore
- National Institute on Aging, Longitudinal Study Section, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
| | - Sokratis Makrogiannis
- Delaware State University, Division of Physics, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Dover, Delaware, United States
| | - Luigi Ferrucci
- National Institute on Aging, Longitudinal Study Section, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
| | - Bennett A. Landman
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Computer Science, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
- Vanderbilt University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
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