{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,17]],"date-time":"2026-03-17T09:38:15Z","timestamp":1773740295595,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":31,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,8]],"date-time":"2023-06-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1686182400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000780","name":"European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["956470"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["956470"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000780","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The structure and topology of the pulmonary arteries is crucial to understand, plan, and conduct medical treatment in the thorax area. Due to the complex anatomy of the pulmonary vessels, it is not easy to distinguish between the arteries and veins. The pulmonary arteries have a complex structure with an irregular shape and adjacent tissues, which makes automatic segmentation a challenging task. A deep neural network is required to segment the topological structure of the pulmonary artery. Therefore, in this study, a Dense Residual U-Net with a hybrid loss function is proposed. The network is trained on augmented Computed Tomography volumes to improve the performance of the network and prevent overfitting. Moreover, the hybrid loss function is implemented to improve the performance of the network. The results show an improvement in the Dice and HD95 scores over state-of-the-art techniques. The average scores achieved for the Dice and HD95 scores are 0.8775 and 4.2624 mm, respectively. The proposed method will support physicians in the challenging task of preoperative planning of thoracic surgery, where the correct assessment of the arteries is crucial.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s23125427","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,8]],"date-time":"2023-06-08T02:58:32Z","timestamp":1686193112000},"page":"5427","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["DRU-Net: Pulmonary Artery Segmentation via Dense Residual U-Network with Hybrid Loss Function"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-5875-6049","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Manahil","family":"Zulfiqar","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Measurement and Electronics, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Krakow, Poland"},{"name":"MedApp S.A., 30-150 Krakow, Poland"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6764-3815","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Maciej","family":"Stanuch","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Measurement and Electronics, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Krakow, Poland"},{"name":"MedApp S.A., 30-150 Krakow, Poland"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8076-6246","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Marek","family":"Wodzinski","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Measurement and Electronics, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Krakow, Poland"},{"name":"MedApp S.A., 30-150 Krakow, Poland"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2299-458X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andrzej","family":"Skalski","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Measurement and Electronics, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Krakow, Poland"},{"name":"MedApp S.A., 30-150 Krakow, Poland"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"117","DOI":"10.1016\/S0140-6736(14)61682-2","article-title":"Global, regional, and national age\u2013sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990\u20132013: A systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2013","volume":"385","author":"Aboyans","year":"2015","journal-title":"Lancet"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"(2011). 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