Semantic segmentation in medical images through transfused convolution and transformer networks.

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed rapid development in the field of medical image segmentation. Deep learning-based fully convolution neural networks have played a significant role in the development of automated medical image segmentation models. Though immensely effective, such networks only take into account localized features and are unable to capitalize on the global context of medical image. In this paper, two deep learning based models have been proposed namely USegTransformer-P and USegTransformer-S. The proposed models capitalize upon local features and global features by amalgamating the transformer-based encoders and convolution-based encoders to segment medical images with high precision. Both the proposed models deliver promising results, performing better than the previous state of the art models in various segmentation tasks such as Brain tumor, Lung nodules, Skin lesion and Nuclei segmentation. The authors believe that the ability of USegTransformer-P and USegTransformer-S to perform segmentation with high precision could remarkably benefit medical practitioners and radiologists around the world.