Improving domain generalization performance for medical image segmentation via random feature augmentation

Abstract

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have shown remarkable performance in medical image segmentation tasks. However, medical images frequently exhibit distribution discrepancies due to variations in scanner vendors, operators, and image quality, which pose significant challenges to the robustness of trained models when applied to unseen clinical data. To address this issue, domain generalization methods have been developed to enhance the generalization ability of DCNNs. Feature space-based data augmentation methods have been proven effective in improving domain generalization, but they often rely on prior knowledge or assumptions, which can limit the diversity of source domain data. In this study, we propose a novel random feature augmentation (RFA) method to diversify source domain data at the feature level without prior knowledge. Specifically, our RFA method perturbs domain-specific information while preserving domain-invariant information, thereby adequately diversifying the source domain data. Furthermore, we propose a dual-branches invariant synergistic learning strategy to capture domain-invariant information from the augmented features of RFA, enabling DCNNs to learn a more generalized representation. We evaluate our proposed method on two challenging medical image segmentation tasks, optic cup/disc segmentation on fundus images and prostate segmentation on MRI images. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our method over state-of-the-art domain generalization methods.

Keywords: Domain generalization; Feature augmentation; Medical image segmentation; Synergistic learning.