Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation

Multiple sclerosis (MS) lesion segmentation is crucial for monitoring disease progression. Deep learning methods have shown promising results but suffer from domain shift problems when evaluated in data from different protocols or scanners. Transfer learning (TL) achieves successful domain adaptatio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Luisana Álvarez, Sergi Valverde, Àlex Rovira, Xavier Lladó
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-01-01
Series:NeuroImage: Clinical
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158225000658
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850235165135077376
author Luisana Álvarez
Sergi Valverde
Àlex Rovira
Xavier Lladó
author_facet Luisana Álvarez
Sergi Valverde
Àlex Rovira
Xavier Lladó
author_sort Luisana Álvarez
collection DOAJ
description Multiple sclerosis (MS) lesion segmentation is crucial for monitoring disease progression. Deep learning methods have shown promising results but suffer from domain shift problems when evaluated in data from different protocols or scanners. Transfer learning (TL) achieves successful domain adaptation, but can lead to catastrophic forgetting, resulting in a significant performance drop on the source domain. Continuous learning aims to address this issue by retaining knowledge from previous domains while adapting to new ones. This work applies Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC) for the first time in the context of domain-incremental learning for MS lesion segmentation. The approach was evaluated using a 3D U-Net trained on public datasets (WMH2017 and Shifts) and fine-tuned on an in-house dataset using both TL and EWC, in both full training and few-shot scenarios. Results show that with only 3 training images from the target domain, EWC leads to a 10% improvement in F-score, while using 5 images achieves similar results to using all available training images. Catastrophic forgetting was reduced by 8%–19% compared to standard TL, where performance drops ranged from 20 to 37%. This work demonstrates that EWC enables models to adapt to new domains while preserving previous knowledge, with minimal data requirements, advancing towards more generalizable deep learning models for clinical MS applications.
format Article
id doaj-art-eaf41285de644766840a7f2d013f4a49
institution OA Journals
issn 2213-1582
language English
publishDate 2025-01-01
publisher Elsevier
record_format Article
series NeuroImage: Clinical
spelling doaj-art-eaf41285de644766840a7f2d013f4a492025-08-20T02:02:24ZengElsevierNeuroImage: Clinical2213-15822025-01-014610379510.1016/j.nicl.2025.103795Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidationLuisana Álvarez0Sergi Valverde1Àlex Rovira2Xavier Lladó3Vicorob Institute, University of Girona, Girona, Spain; Tensor Medical, Girona, Spain; Corresponding author at: Tensor Medical, Girona, Spain.Tensor Medical, Girona, SpainSection of Neuroradiology, Department of Radiology (IDI), Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Spain, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, SpainVicorob Institute, University of Girona, Girona, SpainMultiple sclerosis (MS) lesion segmentation is crucial for monitoring disease progression. Deep learning methods have shown promising results but suffer from domain shift problems when evaluated in data from different protocols or scanners. Transfer learning (TL) achieves successful domain adaptation, but can lead to catastrophic forgetting, resulting in a significant performance drop on the source domain. Continuous learning aims to address this issue by retaining knowledge from previous domains while adapting to new ones. This work applies Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC) for the first time in the context of domain-incremental learning for MS lesion segmentation. The approach was evaluated using a 3D U-Net trained on public datasets (WMH2017 and Shifts) and fine-tuned on an in-house dataset using both TL and EWC, in both full training and few-shot scenarios. Results show that with only 3 training images from the target domain, EWC leads to a 10% improvement in F-score, while using 5 images achieves similar results to using all available training images. Catastrophic forgetting was reduced by 8%–19% compared to standard TL, where performance drops ranged from 20 to 37%. This work demonstrates that EWC enables models to adapt to new domains while preserving previous knowledge, with minimal data requirements, advancing towards more generalizable deep learning models for clinical MS applications.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158225000658Multiple sclerosisLesion segmentationContinuous learningTransfer learningCatastrophic forgetting
spellingShingle Luisana Álvarez
Sergi Valverde
Àlex Rovira
Xavier Lladó
Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
NeuroImage: Clinical
Multiple sclerosis
Lesion segmentation
Continuous learning
Transfer learning
Catastrophic forgetting
title Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
title_full Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
title_fullStr Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
title_full_unstemmed Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
title_short Mitigating catastrophic forgetting in Multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
title_sort mitigating catastrophic forgetting in multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation using elastic weight consolidation
topic Multiple sclerosis
Lesion segmentation
Continuous learning
Transfer learning
Catastrophic forgetting
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158225000658
work_keys_str_mv AT luisanaalvarez mitigatingcatastrophicforgettinginmultiplesclerosislesionsegmentationusingelasticweightconsolidation
AT sergivalverde mitigatingcatastrophicforgettinginmultiplesclerosislesionsegmentationusingelasticweightconsolidation
AT alexrovira mitigatingcatastrophicforgettinginmultiplesclerosislesionsegmentationusingelasticweightconsolidation
AT xavierllado mitigatingcatastrophicforgettinginmultiplesclerosislesionsegmentationusingelasticweightconsolidation