Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation

The locality and spatial field of view of image operators have played a major role in image analysis, from hand-crafted to deep learning methods. In Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the field of view is traditionally set to very small values (e.g. 3 × 3 pixels) for individual kernels and grown...

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Main Authors: Vincent Andrearczyk, Valentin Oreiller, Adrien Depeursinge
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2023-01-01
Series:Informatics in Medicine Unlocked
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352914823002496
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author Vincent Andrearczyk
Valentin Oreiller
Adrien Depeursinge
author_facet Vincent Andrearczyk
Valentin Oreiller
Adrien Depeursinge
author_sort Vincent Andrearczyk
collection DOAJ
description The locality and spatial field of view of image operators have played a major role in image analysis, from hand-crafted to deep learning methods. In Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the field of view is traditionally set to very small values (e.g. 3 × 3 pixels) for individual kernels and grown throughout the network by cascading layers. Automatically learning or adapting the best spatial support of the kernels can be done by using large kernels. Due to the computation requirements of standard CNN architectures, this has been little investigated in the literature. However, if large receptive fields are needed to capture wider contextual information on a given task, it could be learned from the data. Obtaining an optimal receptive field with few layers is very relevant in applications with a limited amount of annotated training data, e.g. in medical imaging.We show that CNNs (2D U-Nets) with large kernels outperform similar models with standard small kernels on the task of nuclei segmentation in histopathology images. We observe that the large kernels mostly capture low-frequency information, which motivates the need for large kernels and their efficient compression via the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Following this idea, we develop a U-Net model with wide and compressed DCT kernels that leads to similar performance and trends to the standard U-Net, with reduced complexity. Visualizations of the kernels in the spatial and frequency domains, as well as the effective receptive fields, provide insights into the models’ behaviors and the learned features.
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spelling doaj.art-e22c911486dc43c4b640e9d229d733c12023-12-07T05:29:15ZengElsevierInformatics in Medicine Unlocked2352-91482023-01-0143101403Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentationVincent Andrearczyk0Valentin Oreiller1Adrien Depeursinge2Corresponding author at: University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland HES-SO Valais, Rue de Technopole 3, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland.; University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland HES-SO Valais, Rue de Technopole 3, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland; Service of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, CHUV, Lausanne, SwitzerlandUniversity of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland HES-SO Valais, Rue de Technopole 3, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland; Service of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, CHUV, Lausanne, SwitzerlandUniversity of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland HES-SO Valais, Rue de Technopole 3, 3960 Sierre, Switzerland; Service of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, CHUV, Lausanne, SwitzerlandThe locality and spatial field of view of image operators have played a major role in image analysis, from hand-crafted to deep learning methods. In Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the field of view is traditionally set to very small values (e.g. 3 × 3 pixels) for individual kernels and grown throughout the network by cascading layers. Automatically learning or adapting the best spatial support of the kernels can be done by using large kernels. Due to the computation requirements of standard CNN architectures, this has been little investigated in the literature. However, if large receptive fields are needed to capture wider contextual information on a given task, it could be learned from the data. Obtaining an optimal receptive field with few layers is very relevant in applications with a limited amount of annotated training data, e.g. in medical imaging.We show that CNNs (2D U-Nets) with large kernels outperform similar models with standard small kernels on the task of nuclei segmentation in histopathology images. We observe that the large kernels mostly capture low-frequency information, which motivates the need for large kernels and their efficient compression via the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Following this idea, we develop a U-Net model with wide and compressed DCT kernels that leads to similar performance and trends to the standard U-Net, with reduced complexity. Visualizations of the kernels in the spatial and frequency domains, as well as the effective receptive fields, provide insights into the models’ behaviors and the learned features.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352914823002496Convolutional networkSegmentationReceptive fieldDiscrete cosine transform
spellingShingle Vincent Andrearczyk
Valentin Oreiller
Adrien Depeursinge
Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
Informatics in Medicine Unlocked
Convolutional network
Segmentation
Receptive field
Discrete cosine transform
title Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
title_full Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
title_fullStr Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
title_full_unstemmed Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
title_short Wide kernels and their DCT compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
title_sort wide kernels and their dct compression in convolutional networks for nuclei segmentation
topic Convolutional network
Segmentation
Receptive field
Discrete cosine transform
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352914823002496
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