Carotid Vessel Wall Segmentation Through Domain Aligner, Topological Learning, and Segment Anything Model for Sparse Annotation in MR Images

Medical image analysis poses significant challenges due to limited availability of clinical data, which is crucial for training accurate models. This limitation is further compounded by the specialized and labor-intensive nature of the data annotation process. For example, despite the popularity of computed tomography angiography (CTA) in diagnosing atherosclerosis with an abundance of annotated datasets, magnetic resonance (MR) images stand out with better visualization for soft plaque and vessel wall characterization. However, the higher cost and limited accessibility of MR, as well as time-consuming nature of manual labeling, contribute to fewer annotated datasets. To address these issues, we formulate a multi-modal transfer learning network, named MT-Net, designed to learn from unpaired CTA and sparsely-annotated MR data. Additionally, we harness the Segment Anything Model (SAM) to synthesize additional MR annotations, enriching the training process. Specifically, our method first segments vessel lumen regions followed by precise characterization of carotid artery vessel walls, thereby ensuring both segmentation accuracy and clinical relevance. Validation of our method involved rigorous experimentation on publicly available datasets from COSMOS and CARE-II challenge, demonstrating its superior performance compared to existing state-of-the-art techniques.