Multi-scale deep reinforcement machine learning for n-dimensional segmentation in medical imaging

A method for three-dimensional segmentation based on machine learning in a medical imaging system, the method comprising:

• scanning, by a magnetic resonance, computed tomography, x-ray, or ultrasound imaging system, a patient, the scanning providing a medical dataset representing a three-dimensional region of a patient, the medical dataset comprising magnetic resonance, computed tomography, x-ray, or ultrasound data;
• applying, by a machine, the medical dataset to a multi-scale deep reinforcement machine-learnt model, the multi-scale deep reinforcement machine-learned model trained with multi-scale deep reinforcement learning to segment boundaries of a three-dimensional object from the medical dataset, the multi-scale deep reinforcement machine-learnt model including a machine-learnt policy of a sequence of actions for shape evolution over iterative refinements of the boundaries of the three-dimensional object, the machine-learnt policy trained to select each of the actions from possibilities given a state of fitting at each of the iterative refinements of shape representation parameters, the sequence resulting from the machine-learnt policy training based on rewards, and the boundaries and refinements described using the shape representation parameters;
• rendering, by a renderer, an image of the three-dimensional object based on the boundaries determined with the policy;
• and
• displaying the image on a display device.