MFA-Net: Multiple Feature Association Network for medical image segmentation

Medical image segmentation plays a crucial role in computer-aided diagnosis. However, due to the large variability of medical images, accurate segmentation is a highly challenging task. In this paper, we present a novel medical image segmentation network named the Multiple Feature Association Network (MFA-Net), which is based on deep learning techniques. The MFA-Net utilizes an encoder–decoder architecture with skip connections as its backbone network, and a parallelly dilated convolutions arrangement (PDCA) module is integrated between the encoder and the decoder to capture more representative deep features. Furthermore, a multi-scale feature restructuring module (MFRM) is introduced to restructure and fuse the deep features of the encoder. To enhance global attention perception, the proposed global attention stacking (GAS) modules are cascaded on the decoder. The proposed MFA-Net leverages novel global attention mechanisms to improve the segmentation performance at different feature scales. We evaluated our MFA-Net on four segmentation tasks, including lesions in intestinal polyp, liver tumor, prostate cancer, and skin lesion. Our experimental results and ablation study demonstrate that the proposed MFA-Net outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of global positioning and local edge recognition.