RGShuffleNet: An Efficient Design for Medical Image Segmentation on Portable Devices

Medical image segmentation plays a crucial role in intelligent medical image processing systems, serving as the foundation for effective medical image analysis, particularly in assisting diagnosis and surgical planning. Over the past few years, UNet has achieved tremendous success in the field of image segmentation, with several UNet-based extension models widely applied in medical image segmentation tasks. However, the application of these models is limited to scenarios where large medical equipment can be deployed, such as hospitals. The significant computational costs associated with these segmentation models pose significant challenges when deploying them on portable devices with limited hardware resources. This hinders the realization of rapid and efficient image segmentation in Homelab. In this paper, we present a lightweight model, RGShuffleNet, specifically designed for resource-constrained mobile devices for medical image segmentation. To reduce parameters and computational complexity, we first propose Reshaped Group Convolution, a novel convolutional method for effectively restructuring dimensions of different feature groups. Modifying the feature structure enhances correlations between different groups. Additionally, we introduce the MSC-Shuffle block to facilitate information flow between different feature groups. Unlike traditional Shuffle operations that focus solely on channel correlation, the MSC-Shuffle block proposed in this paper enables information exchange between different groups in both channel and spatial dimensions, thereby achieving superior segmentation performance. Experimental evaluations on two cardiac ultrasound image datasets and one chest CT image dataset demonstrate that RGShuffleNet achieves performance superior to various other state-of-the-art methods while maintaining lower complexity. Finally, RGShuffleNet is deployed on portable devices.