Improved Brain Tumor Segmentation in MR Images with a Modified U-Net

Abstract

Detecting brain tumors is crucial in medical diagnostics due to the serious health risks these abnormalities present to patients. Deep learning approaches can significantly improve localization in various medical issues, particularly brain tumors. This paper emphasizes the use of deep learning models to segment brain tumors using a large dataset. The study involves comparing modifications to U-Net structures, including kernel size, number of channels, dropout ratio, and changing the activation function from ReLU to Leaky ReLU. Optimizing these parameters has notably enhanced brain tumor segmentation in MR images, achieving a Global Accuracy of 99.4% and a dice similarity coefficient of 90.2%. The model was trained, validated, and tested on many magnetic resonance images, with a training time not exceeding 19 min on a powerful GPU. This approach can be extended in medical care and hospitals to assist radiologists in identifying tumor locations and suspicious regions, thereby improving diagnosis and treatment effectiveness. The software could also be integrated into MR equipment protocols.