Learning an MR acquisition-invariant representation using Siamese neural networks

Abstract

Generalization of voxelwise classifiers is hampered by differences between MRI-scanners, e.g. different acquisition protocols and field strengths. To address this limitation, we propose a Siamese neural network (MRAI-net) that extracts acquisition-invariant feature vectors. These can consequently be used by task-specific methods, such as voxelwise classifiers for tissue segmentation. MRAI-net is tested on both simulated and real patient data. Experiments show that MRAI-net outperforms voxelwise classifiers trained on the source or target scanner data when a small number of labeled samples is available.