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Enhanced Brain Tumor Segmentation on BraTS2020 Using Attention U-Net with 3D Augmentation and Deep Supervision


Authors : Ameer Hamza; Tang Siying; Yaoyao Ran; Ali Sajid; Muhammad Abubakr; Yihong Zhang

Volume/Issue : Volume 11 - 2026, Issue 4 - April


Google Scholar : https://tinyurl.com/mshz5uha

Scribd : https://tinyurl.com/2f9x66t4

DOI : https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/26apr532

Note : A published paper may take 4-5 working days from the publication date to appear in PlumX Metrics, Semantic Scholar, and ResearchGate.


Abstract : Accurate segmentation of glioblastoma subregions from multimodal MRI with enhanced boundary delineation of tumor core is critical for optimal surgical and radiotherapy outcomes, yet current manual annotation approaches remain labor-intensive, subjective, and prone to significant inter-observer variability, limiting treatment planning efficacy. Attention U-Net with deep supervision and Monte Carlo Dropout-based uncertainty quantification is proposed that integrates attention gating at skip connections to enhance tumor-relevant feature detection and improve segmentation of clinically critical enhancing tumor regions on the BraTS2020 Dataset. The symmetric encoder-decoder design with progressive filter expansion (16→32→64→128→256), multi-scale deep supervision across four hierarchical decoder levels with optimized weighted loss functions (0.6, 0.2, 0.15, 0.05), and 3×3×3 convolutions, achieving the highest Enhancing Tumor Dice of 0.847 and Tumor Core Hausdorff Distance of 1.79 mm with an improvement over competing methods (nnU-Net, H2NF-Net, TransUNet) while maintaining robust performance across whole tumor segmentation and boundary delineation. This framework establishes a robust, objective standard for glioblastoma segmentation that reduces manual annotation burden, improves clinical consistency, and achieves superior boundary accuracy with 1.79 mm Hausdorff Distance, enhancing surgical and radiotherapy guidance for better patient care and improved treatment outcomes.

Keywords : BraTS2020 Dataset, Brain Tumor Segmentation, Attention U-Net, Deep Supervision, Boundary Enhancement HD95.

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Accurate segmentation of glioblastoma subregions from multimodal MRI with enhanced boundary delineation of tumor core is critical for optimal surgical and radiotherapy outcomes, yet current manual annotation approaches remain labor-intensive, subjective, and prone to significant inter-observer variability, limiting treatment planning efficacy. Attention U-Net with deep supervision and Monte Carlo Dropout-based uncertainty quantification is proposed that integrates attention gating at skip connections to enhance tumor-relevant feature detection and improve segmentation of clinically critical enhancing tumor regions on the BraTS2020 Dataset. The symmetric encoder-decoder design with progressive filter expansion (16→32→64→128→256), multi-scale deep supervision across four hierarchical decoder levels with optimized weighted loss functions (0.6, 0.2, 0.15, 0.05), and 3×3×3 convolutions, achieving the highest Enhancing Tumor Dice of 0.847 and Tumor Core Hausdorff Distance of 1.79 mm with an improvement over competing methods (nnU-Net, H2NF-Net, TransUNet) while maintaining robust performance across whole tumor segmentation and boundary delineation. This framework establishes a robust, objective standard for glioblastoma segmentation that reduces manual annotation burden, improves clinical consistency, and achieves superior boundary accuracy with 1.79 mm Hausdorff Distance, enhancing surgical and radiotherapy guidance for better patient care and improved treatment outcomes.

Keywords : BraTS2020 Dataset, Brain Tumor Segmentation, Attention U-Net, Deep Supervision, Boundary Enhancement HD95.

Paper Submission Last Date
30 - April - 2026

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