LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules

Numerous people die from lung cancer every year, making it a serious public health issue. Oftentimes, the symptoms of lung cancer manifest only at a later stage, when it is difficult to treat. Pulmonary nodules are commonly found while screening the lungs using a Computed Tomography (CT) scan, and s...

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Main Authors: P. C. Sarah Prithvika, L. Jani Anbarasi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2024-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10776983/
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author P. C. Sarah Prithvika
L. Jani Anbarasi
author_facet P. C. Sarah Prithvika
L. Jani Anbarasi
author_sort P. C. Sarah Prithvika
collection DOAJ
description Numerous people die from lung cancer every year, making it a serious public health issue. Oftentimes, the symptoms of lung cancer manifest only at a later stage, when it is difficult to treat. Pulmonary nodules are commonly found while screening the lungs using a Computed Tomography (CT) scan, and some of the nodules may be cancerous. So, an efficient automated pulmonary nodule segmentation system is needed to isolate the pulmonary nodules from the scan images. The doctors can track the nodules that are likely to be malignant and provide early treatment if they become cancerous, thereby improving the patient’s chance of survival. The attention mechanism is a technique that is often used in computer vision to enhance the neural network’s performance. LA-ResUNet, a pulmonary nodule segmentation model, built using ResUNet with a linear attention mechanism and the Leaky ReLU activation function is proposed. LA-ResUNet efficiently segments pulmonary nodules, while achieving a linear time and space complexity. By employing residual blocks, it is possible to construct a deep network without facing the vanishing gradient problem. Additionally, it makes deep network training simpler. Skip connections allow for better gradient flow during training and better information flow between layers. Leaky ReLU addresses the dying ReLU scenario, a situation where some neurons cease to learn when the network is being trained. LA-ResUNet was used on the dataset LIDC-IDRI (The Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative) and it produced a dice score coefficient (DSC) of 73.11% and Intersection over Union score (IoU) of 60.62%.
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spelling doaj-art-e44e00bce6834e569bb1041929d502ee2025-08-20T02:48:49ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362024-01-011218289418290710.1109/ACCESS.2024.351085610776983LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary NodulesP. C. Sarah Prithvika0https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9313-4056L. Jani Anbarasi1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8904-2236School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai, IndiaSchool of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai, IndiaNumerous people die from lung cancer every year, making it a serious public health issue. Oftentimes, the symptoms of lung cancer manifest only at a later stage, when it is difficult to treat. Pulmonary nodules are commonly found while screening the lungs using a Computed Tomography (CT) scan, and some of the nodules may be cancerous. So, an efficient automated pulmonary nodule segmentation system is needed to isolate the pulmonary nodules from the scan images. The doctors can track the nodules that are likely to be malignant and provide early treatment if they become cancerous, thereby improving the patient’s chance of survival. The attention mechanism is a technique that is often used in computer vision to enhance the neural network’s performance. LA-ResUNet, a pulmonary nodule segmentation model, built using ResUNet with a linear attention mechanism and the Leaky ReLU activation function is proposed. LA-ResUNet efficiently segments pulmonary nodules, while achieving a linear time and space complexity. By employing residual blocks, it is possible to construct a deep network without facing the vanishing gradient problem. Additionally, it makes deep network training simpler. Skip connections allow for better gradient flow during training and better information flow between layers. Leaky ReLU addresses the dying ReLU scenario, a situation where some neurons cease to learn when the network is being trained. LA-ResUNet was used on the dataset LIDC-IDRI (The Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative) and it produced a dice score coefficient (DSC) of 73.11% and Intersection over Union score (IoU) of 60.62%.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10776983/Convolutional neural networkencoder-decoderlinear attentionpulmonary nodule segmentationResUNet
spellingShingle P. C. Sarah Prithvika
L. Jani Anbarasi
LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules
IEEE Access
Convolutional neural network
encoder-decoder
linear attention
pulmonary nodule segmentation
ResUNet
title LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules
title_full LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules
title_fullStr LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules
title_full_unstemmed LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules
title_short LA-ResUNet: An Efficient Linear Attention Mechanism in ResUNet for the Semantic Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules
title_sort la resunet an efficient linear attention mechanism in resunet for the semantic segmentation of pulmonary nodules
topic Convolutional neural network
encoder-decoder
linear attention
pulmonary nodule segmentation
ResUNet
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10776983/
work_keys_str_mv AT pcsarahprithvika laresunetanefficientlinearattentionmechanisminresunetforthesemanticsegmentationofpulmonarynodules
AT ljanianbarasi laresunetanefficientlinearattentionmechanisminresunetforthesemanticsegmentationofpulmonarynodules