Optimizing cardiovascular image segmentation through integrated hierarchical features and attention mechanisms

Technol Health Care. 2024;32(S1):403-413. doi: 10.3233/THC-248035.

Abstract

Background: Cardiovascular diseases are the top cause of death in China. Manual segmentation of cardiovascular images, prone to errors, demands an automated, rapid, and precise solution for clinical diagnosis.

Objective: The paper highlights deep learning in automatic cardiovascular image segmentation, efficiently identifying pixel regions of interest for auxiliary diagnosis and research in cardiovascular diseases.

Methods: In our study, we introduce innovative Region Weighted Fusion (RWF) and Shape Feature Refinement (SFR) modules, utilizing polarized self-attention for significant performance improvement in multiscale feature integration and shape fine-tuning. The RWF module includes reshaping, weight computation, and feature fusion, enhancing high-resolution attention computation and reducing information loss. Model optimization through loss functions offers a more reliable solution for cardiovascular medical image processing.

Results: Our method excels in segmentation accuracy, emphasizing the vital role of the RWF module. It demonstrates outstanding performance in cardiovascular image segmentation, potentially raising clinical practice standards.

Conclusions: Our method ensures reliable medical image processing, guiding cardiovascular segmentation for future advancements in practical healthcare and contributing scientifically to enhanced disease diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords: Cardiovascular image segmentation; diagnostic accuracy; medical image processing; self-attention mechanism.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Cardiovascular Diseases* / diagnostic imaging
  • China
  • Deep Learning*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods