Automated glioblastoma segmentation based on a multiparametric structured unsupervised classification

PLoS One. 2015 May 15;10(5):e0125143. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125143. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Automatic brain tumour segmentation has become a key component for the future of brain tumour treatment. Currently, most of brain tumour segmentation approaches arise from the supervised learning standpoint, which requires a labelled training dataset from which to infer the models of the classes. The performance of these models is directly determined by the size and quality of the training corpus, whose retrieval becomes a tedious and time-consuming task. On the other hand, unsupervised approaches avoid these limitations but often do not reach comparable results than the supervised methods. In this sense, we propose an automated unsupervised method for brain tumour segmentation based on anatomical Magnetic Resonance (MR) images. Four unsupervised classification algorithms, grouped by their structured or non-structured condition, were evaluated within our pipeline. Considering the non-structured algorithms, we evaluated K-means, Fuzzy K-means and Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), whereas as structured classification algorithms we evaluated Gaussian Hidden Markov Random Field (GHMRF). An automated postprocess based on a statistical approach supported by tissue probability maps is proposed to automatically identify the tumour classes after the segmentations. We evaluated our brain tumour segmentation method with the public BRAin Tumor Segmentation (BRATS) 2013 Test and Leaderboard datasets. Our approach based on the GMM model improves the results obtained by most of the supervised methods evaluated with the Leaderboard set and reaches the second position in the ranking. Our variant based on the GHMRF achieves the first position in the Test ranking of the unsupervised approaches and the seventh position in the general Test ranking, which confirms the method as a viable alternative for brain tumour segmentation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Brain Neoplasms / diagnosis
  • Glioblastoma / diagnosis*
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.1348692

Grants and funding

EFG was supported by Programa Torres Quevedo, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, co-funded by the European Social Fund (PTQ-12-05693). EFG, JMGG, and JVM were supported by Red Temática de Investigación Cooperativa en Cáncer, (RTICC) 2013-2016 (RD12/0036/0020). JMGG was supported by Project TIN2013-43457-R: Caracterización de firmas biológicas de glioblastomas mediante modelos no-supervisados de predicción estructurada basados en biomarcadores de imagen, co-funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain; CON2014001 UPV-IISLaFe: Unsupervised glioblastoma tumor components segmentation based on perfusion multiparametric MRI and spatio/temporal constraints; and CON2014002 UPV-IISLaFe: Empleo de segmentación no supervisada multiparamétrica basada en perfusión RM para la caracterización del edema peritumoral de gliomas y metástasis cerebrales únicas, funded by Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria H. Universitario y Politécnico La Fe. This work was partially supported by the Instituto de Aplicaciónes de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones Avanzadas (ITACA). Veratech for Health S.L. provided support in the form of salaries for author EF-G, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of this author is articulated in the "author contributions" section. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.