Labeled medical imaging data is scarce and expensive to generate. To achieve generalizable deep learning models large amounts of data are needed. Standard data augmentation is a method to increase ...generalizability and is routinely performed. Generative adversarial networks offer a novel method for data augmentation. We evaluate the use of CycleGAN for data augmentation in CT segmentation tasks. Using a large image database we trained a CycleGAN to transform contrast CT images into non-contrast images. We then used the trained CycleGAN to augment our training using these synthetic non-contrast images. We compared the segmentation performance of a U-Net trained on the original dataset compared to a U-Net trained on the combined dataset of original data and synthetic non-contrast images. We further evaluated the U-Net segmentation performance on two separate datasets: The original contrast CT dataset on which segmentations were created and a second dataset from a different hospital containing only non-contrast CTs. We refer to these 2 separate datasets as the in-distribution and out-of-distribution datasets, respectively. We show that in several CT segmentation tasks performance is improved significantly, especially in out-of-distribution (noncontrast CT) data. For example, when training the model with standard augmentation techniques, performance of segmentation of the kidneys on out-of-distribution non-contrast images was dramatically lower than for in-distribution data (Dice score of 0.09 vs. 0.94 for out-of-distribution vs. in-distribution data, respectively, p < 0.001). When the kidney model was trained with CycleGAN augmentation techniques, the out-of-distribution (non-contrast) performance increased dramatically (from a Dice score of 0.09 to 0.66, p < 0.001). Improvements for the liver and spleen were smaller, from 0.86 to 0.89 and 0.65 to 0.69, respectively. We believe this method will be valuable to medical imaging researchers to reduce manual segmentation effort and cost in CT imaging.
Full text
Available for:
IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Automated analysis of abdominal CT has advanced markedly over just the last few years. Fully automated assessment of organs, lymph nodes, adipose tissue, muscle, bowel, spine, and tumors are some ...examples where tremendous progress has been made. Computer-aided detection of lesions has also improved dramatically.
This article reviews the progress and provides insights into what is in store in the near future for automated analysis for abdominal CT, ultimately leading to fully automated interpretation.
The papers in this special section focus on the technology and applications supported by deep learning. Deep learning is a growing trend in general data analysis and has been termed one of the 10 ...breakthrough technologies of 2013. Deep learning is an improvement of artificial neural networks, consisting of more layers that permit higher levels of abstraction and improved predictions from data. To date, it is emerging as the leading machine-learning tool in the general imaging and computer vision domains. In particular, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have proven to be powerful tools for a broad range of computer vision tasks. Deep CNNs automatically learn mid-level and high-level abstractions obtained from raw data (e.g., images). Recent results indicate that the generic descriptors extracted from CNNs are extremely effective in object recognition and localization in natural images. Medical image analysis groups across the world are quickly entering the field and applying CNNs and other deep learning methodologies to a wide variety of applications.
The goals of this review paper on deep learning (DL) in medical imaging and radiation therapy are to (a) summarize what has been achieved to date; (b) identify common and unique challenges, and ...strategies that researchers have taken to address these challenges; and (c) identify some of the promising avenues for the future both in terms of applications as well as technical innovations. We introduce the general principles of DL and convolutional neural networks, survey five major areas of application of DL in medical imaging and radiation therapy, identify common themes, discuss methods for dataset expansion, and conclude by summarizing lessons learned, remaining challenges, and future directions.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Machine learning and radiology Wang, Shijun; Summers, Ronald M.
Medical image analysis,
07/2012, Volume:
16, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In this paper, we give a short introduction to machine learning and survey its applications in radiology. We focused on six categories of applications in radiology: medical image segmentation, ...registration, computer aided detection and diagnosis, brain function or activity analysis and neurological disease diagnosis from fMR images, content-based image retrieval systems for CT or MRI images and text analysis of radiology reports using natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU). This survey shows that machine learning plays a key role in many radiology applications. Machine learning identifies complex patterns automatically and helps radiologists make intelligent decisions on radiology data such as conventional radiographs, CT, MRI, and PET images and radiology reports. In many applications, the performances of the machine learning-based automatic detection and diagnosis systems have shown to be comparable to that of a well-trained and experienced radiologist. Technology development in machine learning and radiology will benefit from each other in the long run. Key contributions and common characteristics of machine learning techniques in radiology are discussed. We also discuss the problem of translating machine learning applications to the radiology clinical setting, including advantages and potential barriers. Display omitted
► Mainstream machine learning techniques relevant for radiology are introduced. ► Six major applications of machine learning in radiology are surveyed. ► Central themes of machine learning research in radiology are described. ► Factors impacting translation of machine learning to radiology are discussed.
In this paper, we give a short introduction to machine learning and survey its applications in radiology. We focused on six categories of applications in radiology: medical image segmentation, registration, computer aided detection and diagnosis, brain function or activity analysis and neurological disease diagnosis from fMR images, content-based image retrieval systems for CT or MRI images, and text analysis of radiology reports using natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU). This survey shows that machine learning plays a key role in many radiology applications. Machine learning identifies complex patterns automatically and helps radiologists make intelligent decisions on radiology data such as conventional radiographs, CT, MRI, and PET images and radiology reports. In many applications, the performance of machine learning-based automatic detection and diagnosis systems has shown to be comparable to that of a well-trained and experienced radiologist. Technology development in machine learning and radiology will benefit from each other in the long run. Key contributions and common characteristics of machine learning techniques in radiology are discussed. We also discuss the problem of translating machine learning applications to the radiology clinical setting, including advantages and potential barriers.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Remarkable progress has been made in image recognition, primarily due to the availability of large-scale annotated datasets and deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). CNNs enable learning ...data-driven, highly representative, hierarchical image features from sufficient training data. However, obtaining datasets as comprehensively annotated as ImageNet in the medical imaging domain remains a challenge. There are currently three major techniques that successfully employ CNNs to medical image classification: training the CNN from scratch, using off-the-shelf pre-trained CNN features, and conducting unsupervised CNN pre-training with supervised fine-tuning. Another effective method is transfer learning, i.e., fine-tuning CNN models pre-trained from natural image dataset to medical image tasks. In this paper, we exploit three important, but previously understudied factors of employing deep convolutional neural networks to computer-aided detection problems. We first explore and evaluate different CNN architectures. The studied models contain 5 thousand to 160 million parameters, and vary in numbers of layers. We then evaluate the influence of dataset scale and spatial image context on performance. Finally, we examine when and why transfer learning from pre-trained ImageNet (via fine-tuning) can be useful. We study two specific computer-aided detection (CADe) problems, namely thoraco-abdominal lymph node (LN) detection and interstitial lung disease (ILD) classification. We achieve the state-of-the-art performance on the mediastinal LN detection, and report the first five-fold cross-validation classification results on predicting axial CT slices with ILD categories. Our extensive empirical evaluation, CNN model analysis and valuable insights can be extended to the design of high performance CAD systems for other medical imaging tasks.
Automated computer-aided detection (CADe) has been an important tool in clinical practice and research. State-of-the-art methods often show high sensitivities at the cost of high false-positives (FP) ...per patient rates. We design a two-tiered coarse-to-fine cascade framework that first operates a candidate generation system at sensitivities ~ 100% of but at high FP levels. By leveraging existing CADe systems, coordinates of regions or volumes of interest (ROI or VOI) are generated and function as input for a second tier, which is our focus in this study. In this second stage, we generate 2D (two-dimensional) or 2.5D views via sampling through scale transformations, random translations and rotations. These random views are used to train deep convolutional neural network (ConvNet) classifiers. In testing, the ConvNets assign class (e.g., lesion, pathology) probabilities for a new set of random views that are then averaged to compute a final per-candidate classification probability. This second tier behaves as a highly selective process to reject difficult false positives while preserving high sensitivities. The methods are evaluated on three data sets: 59 patients for sclerotic metastasis detection, 176 patients for lymph node detection, and 1,186 patients for colonic polyp detection. Experimental results show the ability of ConvNets to generalize well to different medical imaging CADe applications and scale elegantly to various data sets. Our proposed methods improve performance markedly in all cases. Sensitivities improved from 57% to 70%, 43% to 77%, and 58% to 75% at 3 FPs per patient for sclerotic metastases, lymph nodes and colonic polyps, respectively.