# MindGrab for BrainChop: Fast and Accurate Skull Stripping for Command Line and Browser

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11860 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11860/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jun 2025.

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

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Multi-Scale Context Aggregation by Dilated Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07122/) (2015)
- [SynthSeg: Segmentation of brain MRI scans of any contrast and resolution without retraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09559/) (2021)
- [Understanding Convolution for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08502/) (2017)
- [SynthStrip: Skull-Stripping for Any Brain Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09974/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Dilated Convolution for Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09957/) (2021)
- [End-to-end learning of brain tissue segmentation from imperfect labeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00940/) (2016)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deployment complexity and specialized hardware requirements hinder the adoption of deep learning models in neuroimaging. We present MindGrab, a lightweight, fully convolutional model for volumetric skull stripping across all imaging modalities. MindGrab's architecture is designed from first principles using a spectral interpretation of dilated convolutions, and demonstrates state-of-the-art performance (mean Dice score across datasets and modalities: 95.9 with SD 1.6), with up to 40-fold speedups and substantially lower memory demands compared to established methods. Its minimal footprint allows for fast, full-volume processing in resource-constrained environments, including direct in-browser execution. MindGrab is delivered via the BrainChop platform as both a simple command-line tool (pip install brainchop) and a zero-installation web application (brainchop.org). By removing traditional deployment barriers without sacrificing accuracy, MindGrab makes state-of-the-art neuroimaging analysis broadly accessible.