LVNet: Lightweight Model for Left Ventricle Segmentation for Short Axis Views in Echocardiographic Imaging

Navchetan Awasthi*, Lars Vermeer, Louis S. Fixsen, Richard G.P. Lopata, Josien P.W. Pluim

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Lightweight segmentation models are becoming more popular for fast diagnosis on small and low cost medical imaging devices. This study focuses on the segmentation of the left ventricle (LV) in cardiac ultrasound (US) images. A new lightweight model [LV network (LVNet)] is proposed for segmentation, which gives the benefits of requiring fewer parameters but with improved segmentation performance in terms of Dice score (DS). The proposed model is compared with state-of-the-art methods, such as UNet, MiniNetV2, and fully convolutional dense dilated network (FCdDN). The model proposed comes with a post-processing pipeline that further enhances the segmentation results. In general, the training is done directly using the segmentation mask as the output and the US image as the input of the model. A new strategy for segmentation is also introduced in addition to the direct training method used. Compared with the UNet model, an improvement in DS performance as high as 5% for segmentation with papillary (WP) muscles was found, while showcasing an improvement of 18.5% when the papillary muscles are excluded. The model proposed requires only 5% of the memory required by a UNet model. LVNet achieves a better trade-off between the number of parameters and its segmentation performance as compared with other conventional models. The developed codes are available at https://github.com/navchetanawasthi/Left_Ventricle_Segmentation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2115-2128
Number of pages14
JournalIEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control
Volume69
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2022

Keywords

  • Deep learning (DL)
  • lightweight models
  • neural networks
  • segmentation
  • ultrasound (US) imaging
  • Echocardiography
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods
  • Ultrasonography
  • Muscles
  • Heart Ventricles/diagnostic imaging

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