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Explainable deep learning framework for brain tumor segmentation using vision transformer and conditional random fields

delete2025-12-04
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PRE
AI
H
Homayoun Safarpour
S
Soroush Sadeghi
P
Payam Zarbakhsh
M
Mohammadreza Kamsari
M
Marjan Kia
R
Ramin Ranjbarzadeh *
DOI:10.1007/s00530-025-02075-ydelete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Brain tumor segmentation is critical for accurate identification and treatment planning. However, delineating intricate tumor areas like Edema, Tumor Core, and Enhancing Tumor remains challenging owing to diversity in dimensions, morphology, and delineation. This introduces a novel deep learning model integrating a pretrained Vision Transformer (ViT) for global context representation, Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) in both encoder and merging stages, and ReLU6. Additionally, attention mechanisms and Conditional Random Fields (CRF) were incorporated for refining feature emphasis and segmentation boundaries. The model was trained and tested on the BraTS 2020 dataset and compared with state-of-the-art methods. The suggested model obtained the highest Dice coefficients across all tumor regions, with improvements of up to 4% over nnU-Net and SwinBTS in the Enhancing Tumor and Edema region. Grad-CAM heatmaps illustrated the model’s proficiency in precisely identifying tumor areas, hence enhancing the interpretability of predictions. The incorporation of multi-scale feature extraction, attention mechanism, and global context representation markedly improved segmentation accuracy and interpretability. The findings underscore the proposed model’s capacity to enhance clinical processes and establish a standard for brain tumor segmentation tasks. Future endeavors involve testing on varied datasets and investigating lightweight structures for real-time applications.
Keywords:
Brain tumor segmentation
Vision transformer
Grad-CAM
Conditional random fields

Journal

Multimedia Systems cover
Multimedia Systems
IF:
3.1
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2.8K
Citations:
2.7K

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department of software engineering
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School of Computer Science
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Faculty of Electrical Engineering
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software engineering department
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department of business
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School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Cited Papers

Cited Papers

Brain Tumor Segmentation based on an Optimized Convolutional Neural Network and an Improved Chimp Optimization Algorithm
err
IF0
err2022-10-27
err0
errOAAI
errRamin Ranjbarzadeh; Payam Zarbakhsh; Annalina Caputo; Erfan Babaee Tirkolaee; Malika Bendechache
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Flexible Fusion Network for Multi-Modal Brain Tumor Segmentation
err2023-07-01
err19
PREAI
errYang, Hengyi; Zhou, Tao; Zhou, Yi; Zhang, Yizhe; Fu, Huazhu
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3DUV-NetR+: A 3D hybrid semantic architecture using transformers for brain tumor segmentation with MultiModal MR images
err2024-03-01
err14
errOAAI
errAboussaleh, Ilyasse; Riffi, Jamal; el Fazazy, Khalid; Mahraz, Adnane Mohamed; Tairi, Hamid
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Brain Tumor Segmentation from MRI Images Using Handcrafted Convolutional Neural Network
err2023-08-11
err34
errOAAI
errUllah, Faizan; Nadeem, Muhammad; Abrar, Mohammad; Al-Razgan, Muna; Alfakih, Taha; Amin, Farhan; Salam, Abdu
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BrainNet: a fusion assisted novel optimal framework of residual blocks and stacked autoencoders for multimodal brain tumor classification
err2024-03-11
err14
errOAAI
errUllah, Muhammad Sami; Khan, Muhammad Attique; Almujally, Nouf Abdullah; Alhaisoni, Majed; Akram, Tallha; Shabaz, Mohammad
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errSave
RAAGR2-Net: A brain tumor segmentation network using parallel processing of multiple spatial frames
err2023-01-01
err45
PREAI
errRehman, Mobeen Ur; Ryu, Jihyoung; Nizami, Imran Fareed; Chong, Kil To
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