# A lightweight Convolutional Neural Network based on U shape structure and Attention Mechanism for Anterior Mediastinum Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01019 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01019/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10504/) (2021)
- [LeViT: a Vision Transformer in ConvNet's Clothing for Faster Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.01136/) (2021)
- [SiamRPN++: Evolution of Siamese Visual Tracking with Very Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11703/) (2018)
- [ResUNet-a: a deep learning framework for semantic segmentation of remotely sensed data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00592/) (2019)
- [ResUNet++: An Advanced Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07067/) (2019)
- [UNETR++: Delving into Efficient and Accurate 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04497/) (2022)
- [LeViT-UNet: Make Faster Encoders with Transformer for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08623/) (2021)
- [U-Net Transformer: Self and Cross Attention for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06104/) (2021)
- [Improving Computer-aided Detection using Convolutional Neural Networks and Random View Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.03046/) (2015)
- [Swin UNETR++: Advancing Transformer-Based Dense Dose Prediction Towards Fully Automated Radiation Oncology Treatments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06572/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To automatically detect Anterior Mediastinum Lesions (AMLs) in the Anterior Mediastinum (AM), the primary requirement will be an automatic segmentation model specifically designed for the AM. The prevalence of AML is extremely low, making it challenging to conduct screening research similar to lung cancer screening. Retrospectively reviewing chest CT scans over a specific period to investigate the prevalence of AML requires substantial time. Therefore, developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model to find location of AM helps radiologist to enhance their ability to manage workloads and improve diagnostic accuracy for AMLs. In this paper, we introduce a U-shaped structure network to segment AM. Two attention mechanisms were used for maintaining long-range dependencies and localization. In order to have the potential of Multi-Head Self-Attention (MHSA) and a lightweight network, we designed a parallel MHSA named Wide-MHSA (W-MHSA). Maintaining long-range dependencies is crucial for segmentation when we upsample feature maps. Therefore, we designed a Dilated Depth-Wise Parallel Path connection (DDWPP) for this purpose. In order to design a lightweight architecture, we introduced an expanding convolution block and combine it with the proposed W-MHSA for feature extraction in the encoder part of the proposed U-shaped network. The proposed network was trained on 2775 AM cases, which obtained an average Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 87.83%, mean Intersection over Union (IoU) of 79.16%, and Sensitivity of 89.60%. Our proposed architecture exhibited superior segmentation performance compared to the most advanced segmentation networks, such as Trans Unet, Attention Unet, Res Unet, and Res Unet++.