System, Method, and Computer Program Product for Segmenting an Image

A system comprising at least one computing device programmed or configured to:

• segment each image in a sequence of images comprising a needle into a needle and at least one needle artifact based on processing each image with a first machine-learning model trained with a plurality of hard labels for a plurality of images, resulting in a plurality of hard-labeled images;
• transform each hard-labeled image of the plurality of hard-labeled images into a soft-labeled image comprising pixel values corresponding to an effect of the at least one needle artifact, resulting in a plurality of soft-labeled images;
• and
• segment at least one image of the sequence of images based on processing the at least one image with a second machine-learning model trained at least partially with the plurality of soft-labeled images.

A computer program product comprising at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium including instructions that, when executed by at least one computing device, cause the at least one computing device to:

• segment each image in a sequence of images comprising a needle into a needle and at least one needle artifact based on processing each image with a first machine-learning model trained with a plurality of hard labels for a plurality of images, resulting in a plurality of hard-labeled images;
• transform each hard-labeled image of the plurality of hard-labeled images into a soft-labeled image comprising pixel values corresponding to an effect of the at least one needle artifact, resulting in a plurality of soft-labeled images;
• and
• segment at least one image of the sequence of images based on processing the at least one image with a second machine-learning model trained at least partially with the plurality of soft-labeled images.