A medical image segmentation method for rectal tumors based on multi‐scale feature retention and multiple attention mechanisms

Abstract Background With the continuous development of deep learning algorithms in the field of medical images, models for medical image processing based on convolutional neural networks have made great progress. Since medical images of rectal tumors are characterized by specific morphological features and complex edges that differ from natural images, achieving good segmentation results often requires a higher level of enrichment through the utilization of semantic features. Purpose The efficiency of feature extraction and utilization has been improved to some extent through enhanced hardware arithmetic and deeper networks in most models. However, problems still exist with detail loss and difficulty in feature extraction, arising from the extraction of high‐level semantic features in deep networks. Methods In this work, a novel medical image segmentation model has been proposed for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) image segmentation of rectal tumors. The model constructs a backbone architecture based on the idea of jump‐connected feature fusion and solves the problems of detail feature loss and low segmentation accuracy using three novel modules: Multi‐scale Feature Retention (MFR), Multi‐branch Cross‐channel Attention (MCA), and Coordinate Attention (CA). Results Compared with existing methods, our proposed model is able to segment the tumor region more effectively, achieving 97.4% and 94.9% in Dice and mIoU metrics, respectively, exhibiting excellent segmentation performance and computational speed. Conclusions Our proposed model has improved the accuracy of both lesion region and tumor edge segmentation. In particular, the determination of the lesion region can help doctors identify the tumor location in clinical diagnosis, and the accurate segmentation of the tumor edge can assist doctors in judging the necessity and feasibility of surgery.