Attention-UNet architectures with pretrained backbones for multi-class cardiac MR image segmentation

Segmentation architectures based on deep learning proficient extraordinary results in medical imaging technologies. Computed tomography (CT) images and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in diagnosis and treatment are increasing and significantly support the diagnostic process by removing the bottlenecks of manual segmentation. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CMRI) is a state-of-the-art imaging technique used to acquire vital heart measurements and has received extensive attention from researchers for automatic segmentation. Deep learning methods offer high-precision segmentation but still pose several difficulties, such as pixel homogeneity in nearby organs. The motivated study using the attention mechanism approach was introduced for medical images for automated algorithms. The experiment focuses on observing the impact of the attention mechanism with and without pretrained backbone networks on the UNet model. For the same, three networks are considered: Attention-UNet, Attention-UNet with resnet50 pretrained backbone and Attention-UNet with densenet121 pretrained backbone. The experiments are performed on the ACDC Challenge 2017 dataset. The performance is evaluated by conducting a comparative analysis based on the Dice Coefficient, IoU Coefficient, and cross-entropy loss calculations. The Attention-UNet, Attention-UNet with resnet50 pretrained backbone, and Attention-UNet with densenet121 pretrained backbone networks obtained Dice Coefficients of 0.9889, 0.9720, and 0.9801, respectively, along with corresponding IoU scores of 0.9781, 0.9457, and 0.9612. Results compared with the state-of-the-art methods indicate that the methods are on par with, or even superior in terms of both the Dice coefficient and Intersection-over-union.