Method, device, and computer program product for deep lesion tracker for monitoring lesions in four-dimensional longitudinal imaging

Abstract

The present disclosure provides a computer-implemented method, a device, and a computer program product for deep lesion tracker. The method includes inputting a search image into a first three-dimensional DenseFPN (feature pyramid network) of an image encoder and inputting a template image into a second three-dimensional DenseFPN of the image encoder to extract image features; encoding anatomy signals of the search image and the template image as Gaussian heatmaps, and inputting the Gaussian heatmap of the template image into a first anatomy signal encoders (ASE) and inputting the Gaussian heatmap of the search image into a second ASE to extract anatomy features; inputting the image features and the anatomy features into a fast cross-correlation layer to generate correspondence maps, and computing a probability map according to the correspondence maps; and performing supervised learning or self-supervised learning to predict a lesion center in the search image.