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Abstract #1139

Neighborhood-attention models for incorporating spatial information in deep learning parameter estimation applied to IVIM

Misha Pieter Thijs Kaandorp1,2,3, Frank Zijlstra1,2, Davood Karimi3, Ali Gholipour3, and Peter Thomas While1,2
1Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, St. Olav’s University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway, 2Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, 3Department of Radiology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

Synopsis

Keywords: Analysis/Processing, Signal Representations, AI, transformers, synthetic data, parameter estimation, IVIM

Motivation: Conventional model-fitting approaches neglect spatial information. Recent work showed promise in using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on spatially-correlated synthetic data. However, the convergence rate remained suboptimal, and the spatial extent was limited.

Goal(s): To improve estimator performance by utilizing transformer networks and training on larger receptive-fields.

Approach: Transformers with self-attention and neighborhood-attention with increased receptive-field were trained on spatially-correlated synthetic data (IVIM), and evaluated quantitatively using novel fractal-noise maps and in-vivo scans.

Results: Transformers excelled in integrating spatial information over CNNs. The application of larger receptive-fields with neighborhood-attention effectively leveraged correlated signal information from nearby voxels, leading to improved estimator performance.

Impact: The improved parameter estimation from neighborhood-attention models trained on synthetic data brings challenging ill-posed signal analysis problems, like IVIM, closer to clinical implementation. Additionally, the novel fractal-noise maps provide spatially-correlated ground truths, permitting new approaches to quantitative medical image analysis.

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