{"title":"Self-supervised disc and cup segmentation via non-local deformable convolution and adaptive transformer","authors":"Wenbo Zhao , Yu Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.slast.2025.100338","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Optic disc and cup segmentation is a crucial subfield of computer vision, playing a pivotal role in automated pathological image analysis. It enables precise, efficient, and automated diagnosis of ocular conditions, significantly aiding clinicians in real-world medical applications. However, due to the scarcity of medical segmentation data and the insufficient integration of global contextual information, the segmentation accuracy remains suboptimal. This issue becomes particularly pronounced in optic disc and cup cases with complex anatomical structures and ambiguous boundaries. In order to address these limitations, this paper introduces a self-supervised training strategy integrated with a newly designed network architecture to improve segmentation accuracy. Specifically,we initially propose a non-local dual deformable convolutional block,which aims to capture the irregular image patterns(<span><math><mrow><mi>i</mi><mo>.</mo><mi>e</mi><mo>.</mo></mrow></math></span> boundary). Secondly,we modify the traditional vision transformer and design an adaptive K-Nearest Neighbors(KNN) transformation block to extract the global semantic context from images. Finally,an initialization strategy based on self-supervised training is proposed to reduce the burden on the network on labeled data. Comprehensive experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method, which outperforms previous networks and achieves state-of-the-art performance,with IOU scores of 0.9577 for the optic disc and 0.8399 for the optic cup on the REFUGE dataset.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54248,"journal":{"name":"SLAS Technology","volume":"34 ","pages":"Article 100338"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"SLAS Technology","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2472630325000962","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BIOCHEMICAL RESEARCH METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Optic disc and cup segmentation is a crucial subfield of computer vision, playing a pivotal role in automated pathological image analysis. It enables precise, efficient, and automated diagnosis of ocular conditions, significantly aiding clinicians in real-world medical applications. However, due to the scarcity of medical segmentation data and the insufficient integration of global contextual information, the segmentation accuracy remains suboptimal. This issue becomes particularly pronounced in optic disc and cup cases with complex anatomical structures and ambiguous boundaries. In order to address these limitations, this paper introduces a self-supervised training strategy integrated with a newly designed network architecture to improve segmentation accuracy. Specifically,we initially propose a non-local dual deformable convolutional block,which aims to capture the irregular image patterns( boundary). Secondly,we modify the traditional vision transformer and design an adaptive K-Nearest Neighbors(KNN) transformation block to extract the global semantic context from images. Finally,an initialization strategy based on self-supervised training is proposed to reduce the burden on the network on labeled data. Comprehensive experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method, which outperforms previous networks and achieves state-of-the-art performance,with IOU scores of 0.9577 for the optic disc and 0.8399 for the optic cup on the REFUGE dataset.
期刊介绍:
SLAS Technology emphasizes scientific and technical advances that enable and improve life sciences research and development; drug-delivery; diagnostics; biomedical and molecular imaging; and personalized and precision medicine. This includes high-throughput and other laboratory automation technologies; micro/nanotechnologies; analytical, separation and quantitative techniques; synthetic chemistry and biology; informatics (data analysis, statistics, bio, genomic and chemoinformatics); and more.