A multi-resolution unet algorithm based on data augmentation and multi-center training for polyp automatic segmentation

Article type: Research Article

Authors: He, Xiaoxu^{; *}

Affiliations: School of Guangdong & Taiwan Artificial Intelligence, Foshan University, Foshan, China

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Xiaoxu He, School of Guangdong & Taiwan Artificial Intelligence, Foshan University, Foshan 528000, China. E-mail: xiaoxuhe@outlook.com.

Abstract: In clinical practice, segmenting polyps from colonoscopy images plays an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer since it provides valuable information. However, accurate polyp segmentation is full of changes due to the following reasons: (1) the small training datasets with a limited number of samples and the lack of data variability; (2) the same type of polyps with a variation in texture, size, and color; (3) the weak boundary between a polyp and its surrounding mucosa. To address these challenges, we propose a novel robust deep neural network based on data augmentation, called Robust Multi-center Multi-resolution Unet (RMMSUNet), for the polyp segmentation task. Data augmentation and Multi-center training are both utilized to increase the amount and diversity of training dataset. The new multi-resolution blocks make up for the lack of fine-grained information in U-Net, and ensures the generation of more accurate pixel-level segmentation prediction graphs. Region-based refinement is added as the post-processing for the network output, to correct some wrongly predicted pixels and further refine the segmentation results. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations on the challenging polyp dataset show that our RMMSUNet improves the segmentation accuracy significantly, when comparing to other SOTA algorithms.

Keywords: Image segmentation, colon cancer, U-Net, polyp segmentation, data augmentation

DOI: 10.3233/JIFS-223340

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 4593-4604, 2023