HCMMNet: Hierarchical Conv-MLP-Mixed Network for Medical Image Segmentation in Metaverse for Consumer Health

In the burgeoning metaverse for consumer health (MCH), medical image segmentation methods with high accuracy and generalization capability are essential to drive personalized healthcare solutions and enhance the patient experience. To address the inherent challenges of capturing complex structures and features in medical image segmentation, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) and multi-layer-perceptron (MLP) mixed module named HCMM, which hierarchically incorporates local priors of CNN into fully-connected (FC) layers, ingeniously capturing specific details and a broader range of contextual information of the focused object from diverse perspectives. Then, we propose an MLP-based information fusion module (MIF) designed to dynamically merge feature maps of varying levels from different pathways, enhancing feature expression and discriminative power. Based on the above-proposed modules, we design a novel segmentation model, HCMMNet, which can adeptly capture feature maps from input medical images at different scales and perspectives. Through comparative experiments, we demonstrate the outstanding performance of the HCMMNet for medical image segmentation on three publicly available datasets and one self-organized dataset. Notably, our HCMMNet showcases remarkable efficacy while maintaining an extraordinarily lightweight profile, weighing in at a mere 3M, rendering it ideal for MCH application.