CORSegNet: Deep Neural Network for Core Object Segmentation on Medical Images

In recent decades, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have delivered promising results in vision-related tasks across different domains. Previous studies have introduced deeper network architectures to further improve the performances of object classification, localization, and segmentation.
However, this induces the complexity in mapping network’s layer to the processing elements in the ventral visual pathway. Although CORnet models are not precisely biomimetic, they are closer approximations to the anatomy of ventral visual pathway compared with other deep neural networks.
The uniqueness of this architecture inspires us to extend it into a core object segmentation network, CORSegnet-Z. This architecture utilizes CORnet-Z building blocks as the encoding elements. We train and evaluate the proposed model using two large datasets. Our proposed model shows significant improvements on the segmentation metrics in delineating cartilage tissues from knee magnetic resonance (MR) images and segmenting lesion boundary from dermoscopic images.