Accurate Prostate Segmentation in Large-Scale Magnetic Resonance Imaging Datasets via First-in-First-Out Feature Memory and Multi-Scale Context Modeling

Prostate cancer, a prevalent malignancy affecting males globally, underscores the critical need for precise prostate segmentation in diagnostic imaging. However, accurate delineation via MRI still faces several challenges: (1) The distinction of the prostate from surrounding soft tissues is impeded by subtle boundaries in MRI images. (2) Regions such as the apex and base of the prostate exhibit inherent blurriness, which complicates edge extraction and precise segmentation. The objective of this study was to precisely delineate the borders of the prostate including the apex and base regions. This study introduces a multi-scale context modeling module to enhance boundary pixel representation, thus reducing the impact of irrelevant features on segmentation outcomes. Utilizing a first-in-first-out dynamic adjustment mechanism, the proposed methodology optimizes feature vector selection, thereby enhancing segmentation outcomes for challenging apex and base regions of the prostate. Segmentation of the prostate on 2175 clinically annotated MRI datasets demonstrated that our proposed MCM-UNet outperforms existing methods. The Average Symmetric Surface Distance (ASSD) and Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) for prostate segmentation were 0.58 voxels and 91.71%, respectively. The prostate segmentation results closely matched those manually delineated by experienced radiologists. Consequently, our method significantly enhances the accuracy of prostate segmentation and holds substantial significance in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.