Automatic Pancreas Segmentation Based on Cascaded Network Considering Pancreatic Uncertainty in Abdominal CT Images

Hyeon Dham Yoon, Hyeonjin Kim, Helen Hong

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2021.48.5.548

Pancreas segmentation from abdominal CT images is a prerequisite step for understanding the shape of the pancreas in pancreatic cancer detection. In this paper, we propose an automatic pancreas segmentation method based on a deep convolutional neural network(DCNN) that considers information about the uncertain regions generated by the positional and morphological diversity of the pancreas in abdominal CT images. First, intensity and spacing normalizations are performed in the whole abdominal CT images. Second, the pancreas is localized using 2.5D segmentation networks based on U-Net on the axial, coronal, and sagittal planes and by combining through a majority voting. Third, pancreas segmentation is performed in the localized volume using a 3D U-Net-based segmentation network that takes into account the information about the uncertain areas of the pancreas. The average DSC of pancreas segmentation was 83.50%, which was 10.30%p, 10.44%p, 6.52%p, 1.14%p, and 3.95%p higher than the segmentation method using 2D U-Net at axial view, coronal view, sagittal view, majority voting of the three planes, and 3D U-Net at localized volume, respectively.