Automatic 3D Ultrasound Segmentation of Uterus Using Deep Learning

TL;DR

This paper presents a deep learning approach for automatic 3D ultrasound segmentation of the uterus, aiming to improve accuracy and eliminate manual initialization needed in semi-automatic methods for better guidance in cervix cancer radiotherapy.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel deep learning framework that automatically segments the uterus in 3D ultrasound images without manual initialization, using 2D UNet-based networks trained on multiple planes.

Findings

Achieved automatic segmentation without manual input

Compared different training scenarios for improved accuracy

Demonstrated potential for clinical application in radiotherapy

Abstract

On-line segmentation of the uterus can aid effective image-based guidance for precise delivery of dose to the target tissue (the uterocervix) during cervix cancer radiotherapy. 3D ultrasound (US) can be used to image the uterus, however, finding the position of uterine boundary in US images is a challenging task due to large daily positional and shape changes in the uterus, large variation in bladder filling, and the limitations of 3D US images such as low resolution in the elevational direction and imaging aberrations. Previous studies on uterus segmentation mainly focused on developing semi-automatic algorithms where require manual initialization to be done by an expert clinician. Due to limited studies on the automatic 3D uterus segmentation, the aim of the current study was to overcome the need for manual initialization in the semi-automatic algorithms using the recent deep learning-based algorithms. Therefore, we developed 2D UNet-based networks that are trained based on two scenarios. In the first scenario, we trained 3 different networks on each plane (i.e., sagittal, coronal, axial) individually. In the second scenario, our proposed network was trained using all the planes of each 3D volume. Our proposed schematic can overcome the initial manual selection of previous semi-automatic algorithm.