Accurate segmentation for different types of lung nodules on CT images using improved U-Net convolutional network

In this study, we propose an accurate segmentation method based on an improved U-Net convolutional network for different types of lung nodules on computed tomography images. The first phase is to segment lung parenchyma and correct the lung contour by applying α-hull algorithm. The second phase is to extract image pairs of patches containing lung nodules in the center and the corresponding ground truth and build an improved U-Net network with introduction of batch normalization. A large number of experiments manifest that segmentation performance of Dice loss has superior results than mean square error and Binary_crossentropy loss. The α-hull algorithm and batch normalization can improve the segmentation performance effectively. Our best result for Dice similar coefficient (0.8623) is also more competitive than other state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms. In order to segment different types of lung nodules accurately, we propose an improved U-Net network, which can improve the segmentation accuracy effectively. Moreover, this work also has practical value in helping radiologists segment lung nodules and diagnose lung cancer.
Source: Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Tags: Research Article: Quality Improvement Study Source Type: research