White matter hyperintensities segmentation in a few seconds using fully convolutional network and transfer learning
Résumé
In this paper, we propose a fast automatic method that seg-
ments white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in 3D brain MR images,
using a fully convolutional network (FCN) and transfer learning. This
FCN is VGG, pre-trained on ImageNet for natural image classification,
and fine tuned with the training dataset of the MICCAI WMH Chal-
lenge. We consider three images for each slice of volume to segment: the
i-th T1 slice, the i-th FLAIR slice, and the residue of a morphological
operator that emphasizes small bright structures. These three 2D images
are assembled to form a 2D color image, that inputs the FCN to obtain
the 2D segmentation of the i-th slice. We process all slices, and stack the
results to form the 3D output segmentation. With such a technique, the
segmentation of WMH on a 3D brain volume takes about 10 seconds. Our
technique was ranked 6-th over 20 participants at the MICCAI WMH
Challenge.