SynergyNet: Bridging the Gap between Discrete and Continuous Representations for Precise Medical Image Segmentation

TL;DR

SynergyNet effectively combines discrete and continuous latent space representations to improve the accuracy and robustness of medical image segmentation across multiple datasets, outperforming existing methods.

Contribution

The paper introduces SynergyNet, a novel architecture that integrates discrete and continuous representations to enhance segmentation performance and detail preservation.

Findings

Outperforms state-of-the-art methods in multi-organ segmentation.

Achieves significant improvements in dice and Hausdorff scores.

Enhances segmentation accuracy for skin lesions and brain tumors.

Abstract

In recent years, continuous latent space (CLS) and discrete latent space (DLS) deep learning models have been proposed for medical image analysis for improved performance. However, these models encounter distinct challenges. CLS models capture intricate details but often lack interpretability in terms of structural representation and robustness due to their emphasis on low-level features. Conversely, DLS models offer interpretability, robustness, and the ability to capture coarse-grained information thanks to their structured latent space. However, DLS models have limited efficacy in capturing fine-grained details. To address the limitations of both DLS and CLS models, we propose SynergyNet, a novel bottleneck architecture designed to enhance existing encoder-decoder segmentation frameworks. SynergyNet seamlessly integrates discrete and continuous representations to harness complementary information and successfully preserves both fine and coarse-grained details in the learned representations. Our extensive experiment on multi-organ segmentation and cardiac datasets demonstrates that SynergyNet outperforms other state of the art methods, including TransUNet: dice scores improving by 2.16%, and Hausdorff scores improving by 11.13%, respectively. When evaluating skin lesion and brain tumor segmentation datasets, we observe a remarkable improvement of 1.71% in Intersection-over Union scores for skin lesion segmentation and of 8.58% for brain tumor segmentation. Our innovative approach paves the way for enhancing the overall performance and capabilities of deep learning models in the critical domain of medical image analysis.