The use of generative adversarial networks in medical image augmentation

Abstract

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been widely applied in various domains, including medical image analysis. GANs have been utilized in classification and segmentation tasks, aiding in the detection and diagnosis of diseases and disorders. However, medical image datasets often suffer from insufficiency and imbalanced class distributions. To overcome these limitations, researchers have employed GANs to generate augmented medical images, effectively expanding datasets and balancing class distributions. This review follows the PRISMA guidelines and systematically collects peer-reviewed articles on the development of GAN-based augmentation models. Automated searches were conducted on electronic databases such as IEEE, Scopus, Science Direct, and PubMed, along with forward and backward snowballing. Out of numerous articles, 52 relevant ones published between 2018 and February 2022 were identified. The gathered information was synthesized to determine common GAN architectures, medical image modalities, body organs of interest, augmentation tasks, and evaluation metrics employed to assess model performance. Results indicated that cGAN and DCGAN were the most popular GAN architectures in the reviewed studies. Medical image modalities such as MRI, CT, X-ray, and ultrasound, along with body organs like the brain, chest, breast, and lung, were frequently used. Furthermore, the developed models were evaluated, and potential challenges and future directions for GAN-based medical image augmentation were discussed. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art in GAN-based medical image augmentation and emphasizes the potential advantages and challenges associated with GAN utilization in this domain.