bibtext: @InProceedings{ Ber_Topologically_MICCAI2024,
                   author = { Berger, Alexander H. and Lux, Laurin and Stucki, Nico and Bürgin, Vincent and Shit, Suprosanna and Banaszak, Anna and Rueckert, Daniel and Bauer, Ulrich and Paetzold, Johannes C. },
                   title = { { Topologically faithful multi-class segmentation in medical images } },
                   booktitle = {Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention -- MICCAI 2024},
                   year = {2024},
                   publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
                   volume = { LNCS 15008 },
                   month = {October},
                   pages = { pending },
                }
abstract: Topological accuracy in medical image segmentation is a highly important property for downstream applications such as network analysis and flow modeling in vessels or cell counting. Recently, significant methodological advancements have brought well-founded concepts from algebraic topology to binary segmentation. However, these approaches have been underexplored in multi-class segmentation scenarios, where topological errors are common. We propose a general loss function for topologically faithful multi-class segmentation extending the recent Betti matching concept, which is based on induced matchings of persistence barcodes. We project the N-class segmentation problem to N single-class segmentation tasks, which allows us to use 1-parameter persistent homology, making training of neural networks computationally feasible. We validate our method on a comprehensive set of four medical datasets with highly variant topological characteristics. Our loss formulation significantly enhances topological correctness in cardiac, cell, artery-vein, and Circle of Willis segmentation.
title: Topologically faithful multi-class segmentation in medical images
authors: Berger, Alexander H. Lux, Laurin Stucki, Nico Bürgin, Vincent Shit, Suprosanna Banaszak, Anna Rueckert, Daniel Bauer, Ulrich Paetzold, Johannes C.