MGA-Net: A Novel Mask-Guided Attention Neural Network for Precision Neonatal Brain Imaging

TL;DR

MGA-Net is an innovative neural network that improves neonatal brain imaging by combining mask-guided attention, multi-modality processing, and high-quality reconstruction, advancing neuroimaging accuracy and robustness.

Contribution

The paper introduces MGA-Net, a novel mask-guided attention neural network that extends U-net for enhanced neonatal brain imaging across MRI and ultrasound modalities.

Findings

Outperforms traditional methods in segmentation accuracy.

Achieves high-quality brain image reconstruction.

Effectively estimates brain volume from ultrasound data.

Abstract

In this study, we introduce MGA-Net, a novel mask-guided attention neural network, which extends the U-net model for precision neonatal brain imaging. MGA-Net is designed to extract the brain from other structures and reconstruct high-quality brain images. The network employs a common encoder and two decoders: one for brain mask extraction and the other for brain region reconstruction. A key feature of MGA-Net is its high-level mask-guided attention module, which leverages features from the brain mask decoder to enhance image reconstruction. To enable the same encoder and decoder to process both MRI and ultrasound (US) images, MGA-Net integrates sinusoidal positional encoding. This encoding assigns distinct positional values to MRI and US images, allowing the model to effectively learn from both modalities. Consequently, features learned from a single modality can aid in learning a modality with less available data, such as US. We extensively validated the proposed MGA-Net on diverse and independent datasets from varied clinical settings and neonatal age groups. The metrics used for assessment included the DICE similarity coefficient, recall, and accuracy for image segmentation; structural similarity for image reconstruction; and root mean squared error for total brain volume estimation from 3D ultrasound images. Our results demonstrate that MGA-Net significantly outperforms traditional methods, offering superior performance in brain extraction and segmentation while achieving high precision in image reconstruction and volumetric analysis. Thus, MGA-Net represents a robust and effective preprocessing tool for MRI and 3D ultrasound images, marking a significant advance in neuroimaging that enhances both research and clinical diagnostics in the neonatal period and beyond.Our code is available at https://github.com/BahramJafrasteh/MGA-Net