# Comparative Analysis of nnUNet and MedNeXt for Head and Neck Tumor Segmentation in MRI-guided Radiotherapy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14752 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14752/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 15 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Skin Lesion Analysis Toward Melanoma Detection 2018: A Challenge Hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03368/) (2019)
- [MedNeXt: Transformer-driven Scaling of ConvNets for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09975/) (2023)
- [SegRap2023: A Benchmark of Organs-at-Risk and Gross Tumor Volume Segmentation for Radiotherapy Planning of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09576/) (2023)
- [Automated head and neck tumor segmentation from 3D PET/CT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10809/) (2022)
- [Analysis of the 2024 BraTS Meningioma Radiotherapy Planning Automated Segmentation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18383/) (2024)
- [A generic ensemble based deep convolutional neural network for semi-supervised medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07995/) (2020)
- [Fully Automatic Segmentation of Gross Target Volume and Organs-at-Risk for Radiotherapy Planning of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02972/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Radiation therapy (RT) is essential in treating head and neck cancer (HNC), with magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)-guided RT offering superior soft tissue contrast and functional imaging. However, manual tumor segmentation is time-consuming and complex, and therfore remains a challenge. In this study, we present our solution as team TUMOR to the HNTS-MRG24 MICCAI Challenge which is focused on automated segmentation of primary gross tumor volumes (GTVp) and metastatic lymph node gross tumor volume (GTVn) in pre-RT and mid-RT MRI images. We utilized the HNTS-MRG2024 dataset, which consists of 150 MRI scans from patients diagnosed with HNC, including original and registered pre-RT and mid-RT T2-weighted images with corresponding segmentation masks for GTVp and GTVn. We employed two state-of-the-art models in deep learning, nnUNet and MedNeXt. For Task 1, we pretrained models on pre-RT registered and mid-RT images, followed by fine-tuning on original pre-RT images. For Task 2, we combined registered pre-RT images, registered pre-RT segmentation masks, and mid-RT data as a multi-channel input for training. Our solution for Task 1 achieved 1st place in the final test phase with an aggregated Dice Similarity Coefficient of 0.8254, and our solution for Task 2 ranked 8th with a score of 0.7005. The proposed solution is publicly available at Github Repository.