Automated segmentation of kidney and renal mass and automated detection of renal mass in CT urography using 3D U-Net-based deep convolutional neural network

Objectives To develop a 3D U-Net-based deep learning model for automated segmentation of kidney and renal mass, and detection of renal mass in corticomedullary phase of computed tomography urography (CTU). Methods Data on 882 kidneys obtained from CTU data of 441 patients with renal mass were used to learn and evaluate the deep learning model. The CTU data of 35 patients with small renal tumors (diameter <= 1.5 cm) were used for additional testing. The ground truth data for the kidney, renal tumor, and cyst were manually annotated on corticomedullary phase images of CTU. The proposed segmentation model for kidney and renal mass was constructed based on a 3D U-Net. The segmentation accuracy was evaluated through the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC). The volume of the maximum 3D volume of interest of renal tumor and cyst in the predicted segmentation by the model was used as an identification indicator, while the detection performance of the model was evaluated by the area under the receiver operation characteristic curve. Results The proposed model showed a high accuracy in segmentation of kidney and renal tumor, with average DSC of 0.973 and 0.844, respectively. It performed moderately in the renal cyst segmentation, with an average DSC of 0.536 in the test set. Also, this model showed good performance in detecting renal tumor and cyst. Conclusions The proposed automated segmentation and detection model based on 3D U-Net shows promising results for the segmentation of kidney and renal tumor, and the detection of renal tumor and cyst.

Automated summary

The study developed a 3D U-Net-based deep learning model for automated segmentation of kidney and renal mass, and detection of renal mass in CTU. The model showed high accuracy in segmentation of kidney and renal tumor, with average DSC of 0.973 and 0.844, respectively, and performed well in detecting renal tumor and cyst. The results suggest that the proposed model has promising potential for clinical applications in the segmentation and detection of kidney abnormalities.