PyConvU-Net: a lightweight and multiscale network for biomedical image segmentation

BACKGROUND: With the development of deep learning (DL), more and more methods based on deep learning are proposed and achieve state-of-the-art performance in biomedical image segmentation. However, these methods are usually complex and require the support of powerful computing resources. According to the actual situation, it is impractical that we use huge computing resources in clinical situations. Thus, it is significant to develop accurate DL based biomedical image segmentation methods which depend on resources-constraint computing. RESULTS: A lightweight and multiscale network called PyConvU-Net is proposed to potentially work with low-resources computing. Through strictly controlled experiments, PyConvU-Net predictions have a good performance on three biomedical image segmentation tasks with the fewest parameters. CONCLUSIONS: Our experimental results preliminarily demonstrate the potential of proposed PyConvU-Net in biomedical image segmentation with resources-constraint computing.