Peer-Reviewed Publication
ArXiv2025July 8, 2025Journal Article
Benchmarking the CoW with the TopCoW Challenge: Topology-Aware Anatomical Segmentation of the Circle of Willis for CTA and MRA.
Kaiyuan Yang1, Fabio Musio1,2, Yihui Ma3,4, Norman Juchler2, Johannes C Paetzold5, Rami Al-Maskari6,7, Luciano Höher6, Hongwei Bran Li1,8, Ibrahim Ethem Hamamci1, Anjany Sekuboyina1, Suprosanna Shit1, Houjing Huang1, Chinmay Prabhakar1, Ezequiel de la Rosa1, Bastian Wittmann1, Diana Waldmannstetter1,7, Florian Kofler1,7,9,10, Fernando Navarro1,7,9, Martin J Menten7,11,12, Ivan Ezhov7, Daniel Rueckert7,9,11,12, Iris N Vos13, Ynte M Ruigrok14, Birgitta K Velthuis15, Hugo J Kuijf13, Pengcheng Shi16, Wei Liu16, Ting Ma16,17, Maximilian R Rokuss18,19, Yannick Kirchhoff18,19,20, Fabian Isensee18,21, Klaus Maier-Hein18,22, Chengcheng Zhu23, Huilin Zhao24, Philippe Bijlenga25, Julien Hämmerli25, Catherine Wurster25, Laura Westphal26, Jeroen Bisschop27, Elisa Colombo28, Hakim Baazaoui26, Hannah-Lea Handelsmann26, Andrew Makmur29, James Hallinan29, Amrish Soundararajan30, Bene Wiestler9, Jan S Kirschke9, Roland Wiest31, Emmanuel Montagnon32, Laurent Letourneau-Guillon32, Kwanseok Oh33,34, Dahye Lee33, Orhun Utku Aydin35, Adam Hilbert35, Jana Rieger35, Dimitrios Rallios35, Satoru Tanioka35, Alexander Koch35, Dietmar Frey35, Abdul Qayyum36, Moona Mazher37, Steven Niederer36, Nico Disch18,19,20, Julius Holzschuh18, Dominic LaBella38, Francesco Galati39, Daniele Falcetta39, Maria A Zuluaga39, Chaolong Lin40, Haoran Zhao40, Zehan Zhang41, Minghui Zhang42,43, Xin You42,43, Hanxiao Zhang42, Guang-Zhong Yang42, Yun Gu42,43, Sinyoung Ra44, Jongyun Hwang44, Hyunjin Park45, Junqiang Chen46, Marek Wodzinski47,48, Henning Müller47, Nesrin Mansouri49,50, Florent Autrusseau49,50, Cansu Yalçin51, Rachika E Hamadache51, Clara Lisazo51, Joaquim Salvi51, Adrià Casamitjana51, Xavier Lladó51, Uma Maria Lal-Trehan Estrada51, Valeriia Abramova51, Luca Giancardo52, Arnau Oliver51, Paula Casademunt53, Adrian Galdran53, Matteo Delucchi2,54, Jialu Liu55,56, Haibin Huang55,56, Yue Cui55,56, Zehang Lin57, Yusheng Liu43, Shunzhi Zhu57, Tatsat R Patel58,59, Adnan H Siddiqui58,59, Vincent M Tutino58,60, Maysam Orouskhani23, Huayu Wang23, Mahmud Mossa-Basha23, Yuki Sato61, Sven Hirsch2, Susanne Wegener26, Bjoern Menze1
1Department of Quantitative Biomedicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
2Institute of Computational Life Sciences, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Waedenswil, Switzerland.
3Department of Neuroradiology, University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
4Department of Neurosurgery, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
5Department of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, New York, USA.
6Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (iTERM), Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany.
7School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Germany.
8Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
9School of Medicine and Health, TUM Klinikum, Technical University of Munich, Germany.
10Helmholtz AI, Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany.
11Munich Center for Machine Learning, Munich, Germany.
12Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK.
13Image Sciences Institute, UMC Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
14Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
15Department of Radiology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
16Electronic & Information Engineering School, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), China.
17Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, China.
18Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
19Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Heidelberg University, Germany.
20HIDSS4Health - Helmholtz Information and Data Science School for Health, Karlsruhe/Heidelberg, Germany.
21Helmholtz Imaging, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany.
22Pattern Analysis and Learning Group, Department of Radiation Oncology, Heidelberg University Hospital.
23Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
24Department of Radiology, Ren Ji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
25Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Division of Neurosurgery, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland.
26Department of Neurology, University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
27Department of Physiology, University of Toronto, Canada.
28Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
29Department of Diagnostic Imaging, National University Hospital, Singapore.
30University of Chicago, USA.
31Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, University Hospital Berne and University of Berne, Berne, Switzerland.
32Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montreél (CRCHUM), Montreél, Québec, Canada.
33DEEPNOID Inc., Seoul, South Korea.
34Department of Artificial Intelligence, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.
35Charité Lab for AI in Medicine (CLAIM), Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
36National Heart and Lung Institute, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK.
37Centre for Medical Image Computing, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK.
38Department of Radiation Oncology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
39EURECOM, Biot, France.
40Institute of Medical Technology, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
41Hangzhou Genlight MedTech Co., Ltd., China.
42Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
43Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
44Department of Artificial Intelligence, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea.
45Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea.
46Shanghai MediWorks Precision Instruments Co., Ltd., China.
47Institute of Informatics, HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Switzerland.
48Department of Measurement and Electronics, AGH University of Krakow, Poland.
49Institut du Thorax (ITX), Université Nantes, Nantes, France.
50Laboratoire de Thermique et Energie de Nantes (LTeN), Université Nantes, Polytech'Nantes, Nantes, France.
51Research Institute of Computer Vision and Robotics (ViCOROB), Universitat de Girona, Catalonia, Spain.
52Center for Precision Health, McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA.
53Physense, BCN-Medtech, Department of Communication and Information Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
54Department of Mathematical Modeling and Machine Learning, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
55Laboratory of Brain Atlas and Brain-inspired Intelligence, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
56School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
57School of Computer and Information Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen, China.
58Canon Stroke and Vascular Research Center, University at Buffalo, NY, USA.
59Department of Neurosurgery, University at Buffalo, NY, USA.
60Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University at Buffalo, NY, USA.
61LPIXEL Inc., Tokyo, Japan.
Abstract
The Circle of Willis (CoW) is an important network of arteries connecting major circulations of the brain. Its vascular architecture is believed to affect the risk, severity, and clinical outcome of serious neurovascular diseases. However, characterizing the highly variable CoW anatomy is still a manual and time-consuming expert task. The CoW is usually imaged by two non-invasive angiographic imag…
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