Tongue image segmentation algorithm based on deep convolutional neural network and attention mechanism

Abstract

 The key step in the intelligence of tongue diagnosis is the segmentation of the tongue image, and the accuracy of the segmented edges has a significant impact on the subsequent medical judgment. Deep learning can predict the class of pixel points to achieve pixel-level segmentation of images, so it can be used to handle tongue segmentation tasks. However, different models have different segmentation effects, and they did not learn the connection between space and channels, resulting in inaccurate tongue segmentation. This paper first discussed the choice of model and loss function and then compared the results of different options to find the better model. Associating the red feature of the tongue is very conducive to segmentation as a feature, this paper tested many methods to try to get the color features of the original image to be paid attention to. Finally, this paper proposed an improved Encoder-Decoder network model to solve the problem based on the results. Start with Resnet as the backbone network, then introduce the U-Net model, and then we fused the attention layer, obtained from the source image through convolution and CBAM attention mechanism, and the feature layer obtained from the last upsampling in U-Net. Experimental results show that: The new, improved algorithm results are 2-3 percentage points higher than the popular algorithm, making it more suitable for tongue segmentation tasks.