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Published in: International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery 2/2017

01-02-2017 | Original Article

Scale-adaptive supervoxel-based random forests for liver tumor segmentation in dynamic contrast-enhanced CT scans

Authors: Pierre-Henri Conze, Vincent Noblet, François Rousseau, Fabrice Heitz, Vito de Blasi, Riccardo Memeo, Patrick Pessaux

Published in: International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery | Issue 2/2017

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Abstract

Purpose

Toward an efficient clinical management of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), we propose a classification framework dedicated to tumor necrosis rate estimation from dynamic contrast-enhanced CT scans. Based on machine learning, it requires weak interaction efforts to segment healthy, active and necrotic liver tissues.

Methods

Our contributions are two-fold. First, we apply random forest (RF) on supervoxels using multi-phase supervoxel-based features that discriminate tissues based on their dynamic in response to contrast agent injection. Second, we extend this technique in a hierarchical multi-scale fashion to deal with multiple spatial extents and appearance heterogeneity. It translates in an adaptive data sampling scheme combining RF and hierarchical multi-scale tree resulting from recursive supervoxel decomposition. By concatenating multi-phase features across the hierarchical multi-scale tree to describe leaf supervoxels, we enable RF to automatically infer the most informative scales without defining any explicit rules on how to combine them.

Results

Assessment on clinical data confirms the benefits of multi-phase information embedded in a multi-scale supervoxel representation for HCC tumor segmentation.

Conclusion

Dedicated but not limited only to HCC management, both contributions reach further steps toward more accurate multi-label tissue classification.
Footnotes
1
scikit-image implementation, http://​scikit-image.​org.
 
2
scikit-learn implementation, http://​scikit-learn.​org/​.
 
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Metadata
Title
Scale-adaptive supervoxel-based random forests for liver tumor segmentation in dynamic contrast-enhanced CT scans
Authors
Pierre-Henri Conze
Vincent Noblet
François Rousseau
Fabrice Heitz
Vito de Blasi
Riccardo Memeo
Patrick Pessaux
Publication date
01-02-2017
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Published in
International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery / Issue 2/2017
Print ISSN: 1861-6410
Electronic ISSN: 1861-6429
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-016-1493-1

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