Segmentation and synthesis of pelvic region CT images via neural networks trained on XCAT phantom data

Abstract: Deep learning methods for medical image segmentation are hindered by the lack of training data. This thesis aims to develop a method that overcomes this problem. Basic U-net trained on XCAT phantom data was tested first. The segmentation results were unsatisfactory even when artificial quantum noise was added. As a workaround, CycleGAN was used to add tissue textures to the XCAT phantom images by analyzing patient CT images. The generated images were used totrain the network. The textures introduced by CycleGAN improved the segmentation, but some errors remained. Basic U-net was replaced with Attention U-net, which further improved the segmentation. More work is needed to fine-tune and thoroughly evaluate the method. The results obtained so far demonstrate the potential of this method for the segmentation of medical images. The proposed algorithms may be used in iterative image reconstruction algorithms in multi-energy computed tomography.