MARS-GAN: Multilevel-Feature-Learning Attention-Aware Based Generative Adversarial Network for Removing Surgical Smoke

Surgical smoke caused poor visibility during laparoscopic surgery, the smoke removal is important to improve the safety and efficiency of the surgery. We propose the Multilevel-feature-learning Attention-aware based Generative Adversarial Network for Removing Surgical Smoke (MARS-GAN) in this work. MARS-GAN incorporates multilevel smoke feature learning, smoke attention learning, and multi-task learning together. Specifically, the multilevel smoke feature learning adopts the multilevel strategy to adaptively learn non-homogeneity smoke intensity and area features with specific branches and integrates comprehensive features to preserve both semantic and textural information with pyramidal connections. The smoke attention learning extends the smoke segmentation module with the dark channel prior module to provide the pixel-wise measurement for focusing on the smoke features while preserving the smokeless details. And the multi-task learning strategy fuses the adversarial loss, cyclic consistency loss, smoke perception loss, dark channel prior loss, and contrast enhancement loss to help the model optimization. Furthermore, a paired smokeless/smoky dataset is synthesized for elevating smoke recognition ability. The experimental results show that MARS-GAN outperforms the comparative methods for removing surgical smoke on both synthetic/real laparoscopic surgical images, with the potential to be embedded in laparoscopic devices for smoke removal.