Voxels Intersecting along Orthogonal Levels Attention U-Net (viola-Unet) to Segment Intracerebral Haemorrhage Using Computed Tomography Head Scans

We implemented two distinct 3-dimensional deep learning neural networks and evaluate their ability to segment intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) seen on non-contrast computed tomography (CT). One model, referred to as "Voxels-Intersecting along Orthogonal Levels of Attention U-Net" (viola-Unet), has architecture elements that are amenable to the INSTANCE 2022 Data Challenge. A second comparison model was derived from the no-new U-Net (nnU-Net). Input images and ground truth segmentation maps were used to train the two networks separately in supervised manner; validation data were subsequently used for semi-supervised training. Model predictions were compared during 5-fold cross validation. The viola-Unet outperformed the comparison network on two out of four performance metrics (i.e., NSD and RVD). An ensemble model that combined viola-Unet and nnU-Net networks had the highest performance for DSC and HD. We demonstrate there were ICH segmentation performance benefits associated with a 3D U-Net efficiently incorporates spatially orthogonal features during the decoding branch of the U-Net. The code base, pretrained weights, and docker image of the viola-Unet AI tool will be publicly available at https://github.com/samleoqh/Viola-Unet .