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Rong Y, Xiang D, Zhu W, Shi F, Gao E, Fan Z, Chen X. Deriving external forces via convolutional neural networks for biomedical image segmentation. BIOMEDICAL OPTICS EXPRESS 2019; 10:3800-3814. [PMID: 31452976 PMCID: PMC6701547 DOI: 10.1364/boe.10.003800] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/15/2019] [Revised: 06/26/2019] [Accepted: 06/27/2019] [Indexed: 05/07/2023]
Abstract
Active contours, or snakes, are widely applied on biomedical image segmentation. They are curves defined within an image domain that can move to object boundaries under the influence of internal forces and external forces, in which the internal forces are generally computed from curves themselves and external forces from image data. Designing external forces properly is a key point with active contour algorithms since the external forces play a leading role in the evolution of active contours. One of most popular external forces for active contour models is gradient vector flow (GVF). However, GVF is sensitive to noise and false edges, which limits its application area. To handle this problem, in this paper, we propose using GVF as reference to train a convolutional neural network to derive an external force. The derived external force is then integrated into the active contour models for curve evolution. Three clinical applications, segmentation of optic disk in fundus images, fluid in retinal optical coherence tomography images and fetal head in ultrasound images, are employed to evaluate the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method is very promising since it achieves competitive performance for different tasks compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yibiao Rong
- School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Soochow University, 215006, Suzhou, China
- Contributed equally to this work
| | - Dehui Xiang
- School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Soochow University, 215006, Suzhou, China
- Contributed equally to this work
| | - Weifang Zhu
- School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Soochow University, 215006, Suzhou, China
| | - Fei Shi
- School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Soochow University, 215006, Suzhou, China
| | - Enting Gao
- School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, China
| | - Zhun Fan
- Key Laboratory of Digital Signal and Image Processing of Guangdong Provincial, College of Engineering, Shantou University, 515063, Shantou, China
| | - Xinjian Chen
- School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Soochow University, 215006, Suzhou, China
- State Key Laboratory of Radiation Medicine and Protection, Soochow University, 215123, Suzhou, China
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