Automatic segmentation of cerebral infarcts in follow-up computed tomography images with convolutional neural networks

Abstract

Background and purposeInfarct volume is a valuable outcome measure in treatment trials of acute ischemic stroke and is strongly associated with functional outcome. Its manual volumetric assessment is, however, too demanding to be implemented in clinical practice.ObjectiveTo assess the value of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in the automatic segmentation of infarct volume in follow-up CT images in a large population of patients with acute ischemic stroke.Materials and methodsWe included CT images of 1026 patients from a large pooling of patients with acute ischemic stroke. A reference standard for the infarct segmentation was generated by manual delineation. We introduce three CNN model..