Deep optimization-guided hybrid neural network for accurate detection and segmentation of white matter hyperintensities in clinical MRI images.

White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are common radiological findings in brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and are strongly associated with neurological disorders such as stroke, dementia, and multiple sclerosis. Accurate detection and segmentation of WMHs are crucial for early diagnosis, disease progression analysis, and treatment planning. However, manual delineation of WMHs is labour-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to inter-observer variability, which limits its practicality in large-scale clinical and research settings. Deep learning has shown promise in automating WMH analysis; however, challenges remain due to heterogeneous lesion sizes, low contrast boundaries, and imaging noise. We propose a Deep Optimization-Guided Hybrid Neural Network (DOGHNN) that combines Inception-v3, ResNet-50, and Practical Swarm Optimization (PSO) for enhanced WMH segmentation. Inception-v3 is employed to capture multi-scale lesion features, enabling the detection of both small punctate and large confluent WMHs. ResNet-50 is integrated to extract deep contextual representations, leveraging residual learning to distinguish true lesions from surrounding tissue and artifacts. Finally, PSO is incorporated as an optimization strategy to iteratively refine fusion weights, segmentation thresholds, and key parameters, minimizing segmentation loss and improving boundary delineation. This hybrid approach ensures both fine-grained lesion sensitivity and robust global feature learning. The DOGHNN framework was evaluated on benchmark WMH MRI datasets with diverse lesion loads and anatomical complexities. Comparative experiments showed superior performance over baseline deep learning models. Quantitative evaluation yielded a maximum precision of 93.2%, recall of 91.5%, dice score 91.1%, and f1-score of 90.5% were achieved by the suggested DOGHNN, and Hausdorff distance of 6.5, confirming its robustness and reliability. By combining multi-scale learning, residual contextual modelling, and optimization-driven refinement, the DOGHNN framework delivers accurate and efficient WMH segmentation. This approach holds strong potential for clinical integration, supporting automated neuroimaging workflows and improving diagnostic decision-making in neurological care.