# Feature-enhanced Generation and Multi-modality Fusion based Deep Neural Network for Brain Tumor Segmentation with Missing MR Modalities

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.04735 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04735/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Identifying the Best Machine Learning Algorithms for Brain Tumor Segmentation, Progression Assessment, and Overall Survival Prediction in the BRATS Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02629/) (2018)
- [3D MRI brain tumor segmentation using autoencoder regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11654/) (2018)
- [Efficient Multi-Scale 3D CNN with Fully Connected CRF for Accurate Brain Lesion Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05959/) (2016)
- [Concurrent Spatial and Channel Squeeze & Excitation in Fully Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02579/) (2018)
- [HeMIS: Hetero-Modal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.05194/) (2016)
- [A review: Deep learning for medical image segmentation using multi-modality fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10664/) (2020)
- [Hetero-Modal Variational Encoder-Decoder for Joint Modality Completion and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11150/) (2019)
- [Robust Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation via Feature Disentanglement and Gated Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.09708/) (2020)
- [Knowledge distillation from multi-modal to mono-modal segmentation networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09564/) (2021)
- [Brain Tumor Segmentation and Radiomics Survival Prediction: Contribution to the BRATS 2017 Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10508/) (2018)
- [Brain Tumor Segmentation on MRI with Missing Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07290/) (2019)
- [Latent Correlation Representation Learning for Brain Tumor Segmentation with Missing MRI Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06231/) (2021)
- [One-pass Multi-task Networks with Cross-task Guided Attention for Brain Tumor Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01796/) (2019)
- [Brain tumor segmentation with missing modalities via latent multi-source correlation representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08870/) (2020)
- [A unified representation network for segmentation with missing modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06683/) (2019)
- [3D Medical Multi-modal Segmentation Network Guided by Multi-source Correlation Constraint](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03111/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [M3AE: Multimodal Representation Learning for Brain Tumor Segmentation with Missing Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05302/) (2023)
- [Medical Image Segmentation on MRI Images with Missing Modalities: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.06217/) (2022)
- [Recent Advances in Multimodal Affective Computing: An NLP Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07388/) (2024)
- [Missing-modality Enabled Multi-modal Fusion Architecture for Medical Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15529/) (2023)
- [Physics-Informed Latent Diffusion for Multimodal Brain MRI Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13532/) (2024)
- [Meta-Learned Modality-Weighted Knowledge Distillation for Robust Multi-Modal Learning with Missing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07155/) (2024)
- [Towards Robust Optical-SAR Object Detection under Missing Modalities: A Dynamic Quality-Aware Fusion Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22447/) (2025)
- [A Multimodal Feature Distillation with Mamba-Transformer Network for Brain Tumor Segmentation with Incomplete Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14019/) (2024)
- [CCSD: Cross-Modal Compositional Self-Distillation for Robust Brain Tumor Segmentation with Missing Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14599/) (2025)
- [D3Seg: Dependency-Aware Diffusion for Brain Tumor Segmentation with Missing Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22249/) (2026)
- [Partial Information Decomposition as a Multi-Contrast 3D MRI Selection Strategy for Resource-Constrained Deep Neural Network Training in Brain Tumor Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15396/) (2026)
- [Boundary-Aligned Contribution Routing for Robust Optical--SAR Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15261/) (2026)
- [BrainIAC: Interactive 3D Brain Lesion Segmentation across Heterogeneous MRI Modalities with Online Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23026/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Using multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is necessary for accurate brain tumor segmentation. The main problem is that not all types of MRIs are always available in clinical exams. Based on the fact that there is a strong correlation between MR modalities of the same patient, in this work, we propose a novel brain tumor segmentation network in the case of missing one or more modalities. The proposed network consists of three sub-networks: a feature-enhanced generator, a correlation constraint block and a segmentation network. The feature-enhanced generator utilizes the available modalities to generate 3D feature-enhanced image representing the missing modality. The correlation constraint block can exploit the multi-source correlation between the modalities and also constrain the generator to synthesize a feature-enhanced modality which must have a coherent correlation with the available modalities. The segmentation network is a multi-encoder based U-Net to achieve the final brain tumor segmentation. The proposed method is evaluated on BraTS 2018 dataset. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method which achieves the average Dice Score of 82.9, 74.9 and 59.1 on whole tumor, tumor core and enhancing tumor, respectively across all the situations, and outperforms the best method by 3.5%, 17% and 18.2%.