Spatial-Aware Self-Supervision for Medical 3D Imaging with Multi-Granularity Observable Tasks

The application of self-supervised techniques has become increasingly prevalent within medical visualization tasks, primarily due to its capacity to mitigate the data scarcity prevalent in the healthcare sector. The majority of current works are influenced by designs originating in the generic 2D visual domain, which lack the intuitive demonstration of the model's learning process regarding 3D spatial knowledge. Consequently, these methods often fall short in terms of medical interpretability. We propose a method consisting of three sub-tasks to capture the spatially relevant semantics in medical 3D imaging. Their design adheres to observable principles to ensure interpretability, and minimize the performance loss caused thereby as much as possible. By leveraging the enhanced semantic depth offered by the extra dimension in 3D imaging, this approach incorporates multi-granularity spatial relationship modeling to maintain training stability. Experimental findings suggest that our approach is capable of delivering performance that is on par with current methodologies, while facilitating an intuitive understanding of the self-supervised learning process.