Ratio maps of T1w/T2w MRI signal intensity do not improve deep-learning segmentation of pediatric brain tumors.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

T1w/T2w ratio mapping, combining voxel-wise signal intensities in T1-weighted (T1w) and T2-weighted (T2w) structural MRI, has been used to investigate cortical architecture in the brain, but has also shown promise in tissue discrimination, even in tumor tissue. Given this, we investigate whether the inclusion of these established T1w/T2w ratio maps, or a similar T1w - T2w combined map, can improve performance on a novel task; automated segmentation of tumor tissue in pediatric brain tumor cases from the BraTS-PED 2024 dataset.

Methods

Using the BraTS-PED 2024 dataset (n = 261 pediatric brain tumor patients), we trained and evaluated (with a five-fold cross validation approach) segmentation performance across tumor subregions with nnU-Net, a state-of-the-art deep

SUBMITTER: Griffiths-King D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12721524 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature