SepU-Net MRI Segmentation Algorithm Using Depthwise Separable Convolution and Pointwise Convolution Integrated U-Net

Các tác giả

Email tác giả liên hệ:

20119192@student.hcmute.edu.vn

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54644/jte.2026.1890

Từ khóa:

Depthwise separable convolution, Medical image segmentation, Light weight neural network, Computational efficiency, Brain tumor segmentation, Lightweight architecture

Tóm tắt

Accurate segmentation of brain tumors in MRI remains challenging due to the computational demands of conventional deep learning models. We present SepU-Net, a lightweight convolutional neural network that employs Depthwise Separable Convolutions and efficiently channel attention to reduce model complexity by 69.3% compared to standard U-Net (2.39M vs. 7.76M parameters).Evaluated on both BraTS2020 and BraTS2021, SepU-Net achieves high accuracy (0.9938 and 0.994), mean IoU (0.842 and 0.8318), and Dice coefficients (0.846 and 0.8325), with only minor declines on the more heterogeneous BraTS2021 dataset. Notably, SepU-Net delivers a 32.34% improvement in Tumor Core segmentation and a 10.14% gain in Enhancing Tumor segmentation over U-Net, while maintaining strong precision (0.994/0.9942) and sensitivity (0.9921/0.9915) across datasets. SepU-Net requires only 8.3 GFLOPs per inference, 65% fewer than U-Net and operates efficiently on embedded devices with a memory footprint of 1.4GB. These results validate its ability to balance accuracy and efficiency, enabling real-time segmentation in clinical settings. Future work will integrate attention mechanisms and extend the architecture to 3D for enhanced spatial context.

Tải xuống: 0

Dữ liệu tải xuống chưa có sẵn.

Tiểu sử của Tác giả

Phong Mai Hong, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering, Vietnam

Phong Mai Hong is currently an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering (formerly Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. His academic interests include medical image processing, deep learning, and lightweight neural network architectures for embedded and clinical applications.

Phone number: 0865243215. Email: 20119192@student.hcmute.edu.vn. ORCID:  https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9741-5092

Lam Mai Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering, Vietnam

Lam Mai Thanh received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education (HCMUTE) (currently Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. His academic interests include medical image processing, deep learning, and intelligent systems.

Phone number: 0865243215. Email: 20119137@student.hcmute.edu.vn. ORCID:  https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0896-6213

Lam Nguyen Ngo, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering, Vietnam

Lam Nguyen Ngo is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering (formerly Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education). He received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in radio and electronics engineering from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Vietnam in 2000 and 2004 respectively. His research interests include wireless communication, data communication, digital signal processing, and computers.

Email: lamnn@hcmute.edu.vn. ORCID:  https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6580-0175

Tài liệu tham khảo

M. Havaei et al., “Brain tumor segmentation with deep neural networks,” Med. Image Anal., vol. 35, pp. 18–31, 2017,

doi: 10.1016/j.media.2016.05.004. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2016.05.004

L. Zhao et al., “MM-UNet: A multimodality brain tumor segmentation network in MRI images,” Front. Oncol., vol. 12, Art. no. 950706, 2022, doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.950706. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2022.950706

J. K. Ruffle et al., “Brain tumour segmentation with incomplete imaging data,” Brain Commun., vol. 5, no. 2, 2023,

doi: 10.1093/braincomms/fcad118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcad118

P. Li et al., “mResU-Net: Multi-scale residual U-Net-based brain tumor segmentation from multimodal MRI,” Med. Biol. Eng. Comput., 2024, doi: 10.1007/s11517-023-02965-1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-023-02965-1

L. Alzubaidi, J. Zhang, and A. J. Humaidi, “Review of deep learning: Concepts, CNN architectures, challenges, applications, future directions,” J. Big Data, vol. 8, Art. no. 53, 2021, doi: 10.1186/s40537-021-00444-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00444-8

B. Hou and S. Guan, “Brain tumor segmentation using deep learning: A review,” J. Comput. Electron. Inf. Manag., vol. 16, 2025,

doi: 10.54097/31ag9n29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54097/31ag9n29

Y. Zhao and L. Lin, “A lightweight U-Net for medical image segmentation,” in Proc. PIERS, 2024, pp. 1–5,

doi: 10.1109/PIERS62282.2024.10618503. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/PIERS62282.2024.10618503

L. Shen et al., “MBDRes-U-Net: Multi-scale lightweight brain tumor segmentation network,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2411.01896, 2024, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2411.01896.

G. E. S. Shahid et al., “LIU-NET: Lightweight inception U-Net for efficient brain tumor segmentation,” PeerJ Comput. Sci., 2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.2787

doi: 10.1109/CW58918.2023.00012. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CW58918.2023.00012

A. G. Howard et al., “MobileNets: Efficient convolutional neural networks for mobile vision applications,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:1704.04861, 2017.

M. Sandler et al., “MobileNetV2: Inverted residuals and linear bottlenecks,” in Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2018, pp. 4510–4520,

doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2018.00474. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2018.00474

K. Avazov et al., “Dynamic focus on tumor boundaries: A lightweight U-Net for MRI brain tumor segmentation,” Bioengineering, vol. 11, Art. no. 1302, 2024, doi: 10.3390/bioengineering11121302. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering11121302

D. Liu et al., “SGEResU-Net for brain tumor segmentation,” Math. Biosci. Eng., 2022, doi: 10.3934/mbe.2022073. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3934/mbe.2022261

Awsaf, “Brain tumor segmentation 2020 dataset,” Kaggle, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/awsaf49/brats20-dataset-training-validation

S. Zabihi et al., “SepUNet: Depthwise separable convolution integrated U-Net,” in Proc. IEEE ICIP, 2021, pp. 2503–2507, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIP42928.2021.9506285

doi: 10.1109/ICIP42928.2021.9506283. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIP42928.2021.9506283

S. Gore, “Brain tumour segmentation and analysis using BraTS dataset with improvised 2D and 3D U-Net models,” Research Square, 2023, doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-2791706/v1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2791706/v1

S. Bakas et al., “Advancing TCGA glioma MRI collections with expert segmentation labels and radiomic features,” Sci. Data, vol. 4, Art. no. 170117, 2017, doi: 10.1038/sdata.2017.117. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2017.117

S. Bakas et al., “Identifying the best machine learning algorithms for brain tumor segmentation,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:1811.02629, 2018.

A. M. Winkler, “The NIfTI file format,” 2012. [Online]. Available: https://brainder.org/2012/09/23/the-nifti-file-format/

M. Brett et al., “NiBabel: Access a cacophony of neuroimaging file formats,” 2012. [Online]. Available: https://nipy.org/nibabel/nifti_images.html

A. M. Winkler, “Brainder,” 2012. [Online]. Available: https://brainder.org/2012/09/23/

H. Dong et al., “Automatic brain tumor detection using U-Net,” in Med. Image Underst. Anal., Springer, 2017, pp. 506–517,

doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-60964-5_44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60964-5_44

F. Chollet, “Xception: Deep learning with depthwise separable convolutions,” in Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2017, pp. 1251–1258,

doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2017.195. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2017.195

B. S. Hua, M. K. Tran, and S. K. Yeung, “Pointwise convolutional neural networks,” in Proc. IEEE/GVF, 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2018.00109

D. Haase and M. A. Daniel, “Rethinking depthwise separable convolutions,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2003.13549, 2020,

doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2003.13549.

J. Hu et al., “Squeeze-and-excitation networks,” in Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2018, pp. 7132–7141, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2018.00745. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2018.00745

N. Klingler, “Squeeze-and-excitation networks: A performance upgrade,” 2024. [Online]. Available: https://viso.ai/deep-learning/squeeze-and-excite-networks/

S. Woo, J. Park, J. Y. Lee, and I. S. Kweon, “CBAM: Convolutional block attention module,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:1807.06521, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01234-2_1

Q. Wang et al., “ECA-Net: Efficient channel attention for deep convolutional neural networks,” in Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2020, pp. 11534–11542, doi: 10.1109/CVPR42600.2020.01155. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR42600.2020.01155

H. Yang et al., “RS-YOLOX: A high-precision detector for object detection in satellite remote sensing images,” Appl. Sci., 2025,

doi: 10.3390/app12178707. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/app12178707

S. R. Dubey, S. K. Singh, and B. B. Chaudhuri, “Activation functions in deep learning: A comprehensive survey and benchmark,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2109.14545, 2022, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2109.14545. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2022.06.111

N. Srivastava et al., “Dropout: A simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting,” J. Mach. Learn. Res., vol. 15, pp. 1929–1958, 2014.

K. Matoba, N. Dimitriadis, and F. Fleuret, “The theoretical expressiveness of max pooling,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2203.01016, 2022, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2203.01016.

O. Ronneberger, P. Fischer, and T. Brox, “U-Net: Convolutional networks for biomedical image segmentation,” in Proc. MICCAI, 2015, pp. 234–241, doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-24574-4_28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24574-4_28

K. Machida, I. Nambu, and Y. Wada, “Transposed convolution as alternative preprocessor for brain–computer interface using EEG,” Appl. Sci., 2023, doi: 10.3390/app13063578. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/app13063578

R. Rastislav and K. Sayed, “3D MRI brain tumor segmentation using U-Net,” Kaggle, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.kaggle.com/code/khaledsayedaaaaa/3d-mri-brain-tumor-segmentation-u-net-acc-99

R. Preetha et al., “Brain tumor segmentation using multi-scale attention U-Net with EfficientNetB4 encoder for enhanced MRI analysis,” Sci. Rep., 2025, doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-94267-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94267-9

Tải xuống

Đã Xuất bản

2026-02-28

Cách trích dẫn

[1]
Phong Mai Hong, Lam Mai Thanh, và Lam Nguyen Ngo, “SepU-Net MRI Segmentation Algorithm Using Depthwise Separable Convolution and Pointwise Convolution Integrated U-Net”, JTE, vol 21, số p.h 01, tr 35–46, tháng 2 2026.

Số

Chuyên mục

Bài báo khoa học

Categories