Estimating CT image from MRI data using 3D fully convolutional networks

Dong Nie, Xiaohuan Cao, Yaozong Gao, Li Wang, Dinggang Shen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

149 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Computed tomography (CT) is critical for various clinical applications, e.g., radiotherapy treatment planning and also PET attenuation correction. However, CT exposes radiation during CT imaging, which may cause side effects to patients. Compared to CT, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is much safer and does not involve any radiation. Therefore, recently researchers are greatly motivated to estimate CT image from its corresponding MR image of the same subject for the case of radiotherapy planning. In this paper, we propose a 3D deep learning based method to address this challenging problem. Specifically, a 3D fully convolutional neural network (FCN) is adopted to learn an endto-end nonlinear mapping from MR image to CT image. Compared to the conventional convolutional neural network (CNN), FCN generates structured output and can better preserve the neighborhood information in the predicted CT image. We have validated our method in a real pelvic CT/MRI dataset. Experimental results show that our method is accurate and robust for predicting CT image from MRI image, and also outperforms three state-of-the-art methods under comparison. In addition, the parameters, such as network depth and activation function, are extensively studied to give an insight for deep learning based regression tasks in our application.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDeep Learning and Data Labeling for Medical Applications - 1st International Workshop, LABELS 2016, and 2nd International Workshop, DLMIA 2016 Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2016, Proceedings
EditorsZhi Lu, Vasileios Belagiannis, Joao Manuel R.S. Tavares, Jaime S. Cardoso, Andrew Bradley, Joao Paulo Papa, Jacinto C. Nascimento, Marco Loog, Julien Cornebise, Gustavo Carneiro, Diana Mateus, Loic Peter
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages170-178
Number of pages9
ISBN (Print)9783319469751
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Event1st International Workshop on Large-Scale Annotation of Biomedical Data and Expert Label Synthesis, LABELS 2016 and 2nd International Workshop on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis, DLMIA 2016 held in conjunction with 19th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2016 - Athens, Greece
Duration: 2016 Oct 212016 Oct 21

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume10008 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other1st International Workshop on Large-Scale Annotation of Biomedical Data and Expert Label Synthesis, LABELS 2016 and 2nd International Workshop on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis, DLMIA 2016 held in conjunction with 19th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2016
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityAthens
Period16/10/2116/10/21

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

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