AccScience Publishing / AIH / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/aih.3889
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Enhancing spinal MRI segmentation with an asymmetric U-Net architecture

Longfei Zhou1†* Xingyu Chen2† Weihao Cheng3 Zhanghao Qin2 Tianao Shen4 Pingyu Cao5 Zebo Huang2 Xiangyu Wu6 Yiyao Zhang7
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1 Department of Biomedical, Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering and Business, Gannon University, Erie, Philadelphia, United States of America
2 School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China
3 School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
4 School of Internet of Things Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China
5 School of Remote Sensing and Surveying Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
6 School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China
7 College of Robot and Engineering, Guangzhou City University of Technology, Yinchuan, Ningxia, China
Submitted: 7 June 2024 | Accepted: 1 August 2024 | Published: 21 October 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Spinal diseases are among the most prevalent health issues in modern society, significantly impacting patients’ quality of life. Diagnosing conditions such as disc herniation and spinal deformity requires advanced medical imaging techniques, including X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography, and nuclear magnetic resonance. Spine MRI is particularly crucial due to its ability to provide high-resolution images of soft tissues, essential for accurate diagnosis. However, the manual segmentation of spine MRI images is labor-intensive and inadequate for large-scale quantitative analysis. Thus, developing automated spinal MRI segmentation methods is critical to alleviating doctors’ workload and enhancing diagnostic efficiency. In this study, we propose a novel asymmetric U-Net architecture designed to improve the precision of reconstructing complex structures and details by increasing the depth of the upsampling side. The model incorporates adjacent-scale skip connections to control parameters while maintaining high segmentation accuracy. In addition, residual connections on the upsampling side prevent gradient vanishing, thereby enhancing the network’s feature learning and representation capabilities. Experimental results indicate that this method significantly reduces training time and increases model accuracy compared to traditional approaches, marking a substantial advancement in automated spinal MRI segmentation. This innovative approach holds promise for improving clinical outcomes and optimizing the workflow in medical imaging departments.

Keywords
Spinal magnetic resonance imaging
Automated segmentation
Asymmetric U-Net
Medical imaging
Deep learning
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Artificial Intelligence in Health, Electronic ISSN: 3029-2387 Print ISSN: 3041-0894, Published by AccScience Publishing