Efficient spine segmentation network based on multi‐scale feature extraction and multi‐dimensional spatial attention

Abstract

In spine imaging, efficient automatic segmentation is crucial for clinical decision‐making, yet current models increase accuracy at the expense of elevated parameter counts and computational complexity, complicating integration with contemporary medical devices. Addressing identified challenges, this research introduces LE‐NeXt, a spine segmentation framework utilizing multi‐dimensional spatial attention and multi‐scale feature extraction, optimizing the architecture via convolution and MLP. It integrates lightweight convolutions and attention mechanisms within an encoder‐decoder model, enhancing stage‐specific feature extraction while ensuring efficiency. Experimental analyses on VerSe and SpineWeb datasets demonstrate that LE‐NeXt outperforms the lightweight U‐NeXt, enhancing IoU accuracy from 87.7 to 89.8 on VerSe, and exceeds the performance of established networks such as U‐Net and its variants. Significantly, on SpineWeb, LE‐NeXt not only surpasses Trans U‐Net in accuracy but also achieves a considerable reduction in both parameter count and computational complexity. These results emphasize LE‐NeXt's effectiveness in improving segmentation precision efficiently, optimally balancing computational efficiency and accuracy.