DW-Net: Dynamic Multi-Hierarchical Weighting Segmentation Network for Joint Segmentation of Retina Layers With Choroid Neovascularization

Front Neurosci. 2021 Dec 24:15:797166. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.797166. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Choroid neovascularization (CNV) is one of the blinding factors. The early detection and quantitative measurement of CNV are crucial for the establishment of subsequent treatment. Recently, many deep learning-based methods have been proposed for CNV segmentation. However, CNV is difficult to be segmented due to the complex structure of the surrounding retina. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic multi-hierarchical weighting segmentation network (DW-Net) for the simultaneous segmentation of retinal layers and CNV. Specifically, the proposed network is composed of a residual aggregation encoder path for the selection of informative feature, a multi-hierarchical weighting connection for the fusion of detailed information and abstract information, and a dynamic decoder path. Comprehensive experimental results show that our proposed DW-Net achieves better performance than other state-of-the-art methods.

Keywords: attention mechanism; choroid neovascularization; convolutional neural network; medical image processing; multi-target segmentation; optical coherence tomography.