The delineation of largely deformed brain midline using regression-based line detection network.
Journal:
Medical physics
Published Date:
Oct 15, 2020
Abstract
PURPOSE: The human brain has two cerebral hemispheres that are roughly symmetric and separated by a midline, which is nearly a straight line shown in axial computed tomography (CT) images in healthy subjects. However, brain diseases such as hematoma and tumors often cause midline shift, where the degree of shift can be regarded as a quantitative indication in clinical practice. To facilitate clinical evaluation, we need computer-aided methods to automate this quantification. Nevertheless, most existing studies focused on the landmark- or symmetry-based methods that provide only the existence of shift or its maximum distance, which could be easily affected by anatomical variability and large brain deformations. Intuitive results such as midline delineation or measurement are lacking. In this study, we focus on developing an automated and robust method based on the fully convolutional neural network for the delineation of midline in largely deformed brains.