Dimensionality Reduction Hybrid U-Net for Brain Extraction in Magnetic Resonance Imaging

In various applications, such as disease diagnosis, surgical navigation, human brain atlas analysis, and other neuroimage processing scenarios, brain extraction is typically regarded as the initial stage in MRI image processing. Whole-brain semantic segmentation algorithms, such as U-Net, have demonstrated the ability to achieve relatively satisfactory results even with a limited number of training samples. In order to enhance the precision of brain semantic segmentation, various frameworks have been developed, including 3D U-Net, slice U-Net, and auto-context U-Net. However, the processing methods employed in these models are relatively complex when applied to 3D data models. In this article, we aim to reduce the complexity of the model while maintaining appropriate performance. As an initial step to enhance segmentation accuracy, the preprocessing extraction of full-scale information from magnetic resonance images is performed with a cluster tool. Subsequently, three multi-input hybrid U-Net model frameworks are tested and compared. Finally, we propose utilizing a fusion of two-dimensional segmentation outcomes from different planes to attain improved results. The performance of the proposed framework was tested using publicly accessible benchmark datasets, namely LPBA40, in which we obtained Dice overlap coefficients of 98.05%. Improvement was achieved via our algorithm against several previous studies.