EMedNeXt: An Enhanced Brain Tumor Segmentation Framework for Sub-Saharan Africa using MedNeXt V2 with Deep Supervision

TL;DR

EMedNeXt is a new brain tumor segmentation framework designed for low-resource settings in Sub-Saharan Africa, improving accuracy and robustness using enhanced deep learning techniques tailored for MRI challenges.

Contribution

The paper introduces EMedNeXt, a novel segmentation framework with a larger region of interest, improved architecture, and robust ensembling, specifically optimized for resource-constrained environments.

Findings

Achieved an average LesionWise DSC of 0.897.

Attained LesionWise NSD of 0.541.

Demonstrated robustness in low-quality MRI conditions.

Abstract

Brain cancer affects millions worldwide, and in nearly every clinical setting, doctors rely on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose and monitor gliomas. However, the current standard for tumor quantification through manual segmentation of multi-parametric MRI is time-consuming, requires expert radiologists, and is often infeasible in under-resourced healthcare systems. This problem is especially pronounced in low-income regions, where MRI scanners are of lower quality and radiology expertise is scarce, leading to incorrect segmentation and quantification. In addition, the number of acquired MRI scans in Africa is typically small. To address these challenges, the BraTS-Lighthouse 2025 Challenge focuses on robust tumor segmentation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where resource constraints and image quality degradation introduce significant shifts. In this study, we present EMedNeXt -- an enhanced brain tumor segmentation framework based on MedNeXt V2 with deep supervision and optimized post-processing pipelines tailored for SSA. EMedNeXt introduces three key contributions: a larger region of interest, an improved nnU-Net v2-based architectural skeleton, and a robust model ensembling system. Evaluated on the hidden validation set, our solution achieved an average LesionWise DSC of 0.897 with an average LesionWise NSD of 0.541 and 0.84 at a tolerance of 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm, respectively.