Automated Computer-assisted Detection System for Cerebral Aneurysms in Time-of-flight Magnetic Resonance Angiography Using Fully Convolutional Network

Background: As the rupture of cerebral aneurysm may lead to fatal results, early detection of unruptured aneurysms may save lives. At present, the contrast-unenhanced time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography is one of the most commonly used methods for screening aneurysms. The computer-assisted detection system for cerebral aneurysms can help clinicians improve the accuracy of aneurysm diagnosis. As fully convolutional network could classify the image pixel-wise, its three-dimensional implementation is highly suitable for the classification of the vascular structure. However, because the volume of blood vessels in the image is relatively small, 3D convolutional neural network does not work well for blood vessels.

Results: The presented study developed a computer-assisted detection system for cerebral aneurysms in the contrast-unenhanced time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography image. The system first extracts the volume of interest with a fully automatic vessel segmentation algorithm, then uses 3D-UNet-based fully convolutional network to detect the aneurysm areas. A total of 131 magnetic resonance angiography image data are used in this study, among which 76 are training sets, 20 are internal test sets and 35 are external test sets. The presented system obtained 94.4% sensitivity in the fivefold cross-validation of the internal test sets and obtained 82.9% sensitivity with 0.86 false positive/case in the detection of the external test sets.

Conclusions: The proposed computer-assisted detection system can automatically detect the suspected aneurysm areas in contrast-unenhanced time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography images. It can be used for aneurysm screening in the daily physical examination.