Training a pose estimation model to determine anatomy keypoints in images

A system for training a pose estimation model to locate anatomy keypoints in an anatomy represented in a digital image, comprising:

• a teacher network, implementing machine learning, to process images representing anatomies to produce heatmaps representing keypoints of the anatomies;
• an anatomy parsing network, implementing machine learning, to process the images to produce segmentation representations labeling anatomies represented in the images;
• a heatmap selector to concatenate the segmentation representations from the anatomy parsing network and the heatmaps from the teacher network to produce mixed heatmaps;
• and
• a pose estimation model, implementing machine learning, trained to process the images to output predicted heatmaps to minimize a loss function of the output predicted heatmaps from the pose estimation model and mixed heatmaps.

A method for training a pose estimation model to locate anatomy keypoints in an anatomy represented in a digital image, comprising:

• processing images representing anatomies to produce heatmaps representing keypoints of the anatomies;
• processing the images to produce segmentation representations labeling anatomies represented in the images;
• concatenating the segmentation representations from the anatomy parsing network and the heatmaps to produce mixed heatmaps;
• and
• training a pose estimation model, implementing machine learning, to process the images to output predicted heatmaps to minimize a loss function of the output predicted heatmaps from the pose estimation model and the mixed heatmaps.