Computer-aided Diagnosis Approach Research Articles

A Deep Learning Model for Cervical Optical Coherence Tomography Image Classification.

Objectives: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has recently been used in gynecology to detect cervical lesions in vivo and proven more effective than colposcopy in clinical trials. However, most gynecologists are unfamiliar with this new imaging technique, requiring intelligent computer-aided diagnosis approaches to help them interpret cervical OCT images efficiently. This study aims to (1) develop a clinically-usable deep learning (DL)-based classification model of 3D OCT volumes from cervical tissue and (2) validate the DL model's effectiveness in detecting high-risk cervical lesions, including high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions and cervical cancer. Method: The proposed DL model, designed based on the convolutional neural network architecture, combines a feature pyramid network (FPN) with texture encoding and deep supervision. We extracted, represent, and fused four-scale texture features to improve classification performance on high-risk local lesions. We also designed an auxiliary classification mechanism based on deep supervision to adjust the weight of each scale in FPN adaptively, enabling low-cost training of the whole model. Results: In the binary classification task detecting positive subjects with high-risk cervical lesions, our DL model achieved an 81.55% (95% CI, 72.70-88.51%) F1-score with 82.35% (95% CI, 69.13-91.60%) sensitivity and 81.48% (95% CI, 68.57-90.75%) specificity on the Renmin dataset, outperforming five experienced medical experts. It also achieved an 84.34% (95% CI, 74.71-91.39%) F1-score with 87.50% (95% CI, 73.20-95.81%) sensitivity and 90.59% (95% CI, 82.29-95.85%) specificity on the Huaxi dataset, comparable to the overall level of the best investigator. Moreover, our DL model provides visual diagnostic evidence of histomorphological and texture features learned in OCT images to assist gynecologists in making clinical decisions quickly. Conclusions: Our DL model holds great promise to be used in cervical lesion screening with OCT efficiently and effectively.

Attention-Like Multimodality Fusion With Data Augmentation for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders Using MRI.

The globally rising prevalence of mental disorders leads to shortfalls in timely diagnosis and therapy to reduce patients' suffering. Facing such an urgent public health problem, professional efforts based on symptom criteria are seriously overstretched. Recently, the successful applications of computer-aided diagnosis approaches have provided timely opportunities to relieve the tension in healthcare services. Particularly, multimodal representation learning gains increasing attention thanks to the high temporal and spatial resolution information extracted from neuroimaging fusion. In this work, we propose an efficient multimodality fusion framework to identify multiple mental disorders based on the combination of functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging. A multioutput conditional generative adversarial network (GAN) is developed to address the scarcity of multimodal data for augmentation. Based on the augmented training data, the multiheaded gating fusion model is proposed for classification by extracting the complementary features across different modalities. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed model can achieve robust accuracies of 75.1 ± 1.5 %, 72.9 ± 1.1 %, and 87.2 ± 1.5 % for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia, respectively. In addition, the interpretability of our model is expected to enable the identification of remarkable neuropathology diagnostic biomarkers, leading to well-informed therapeutic decisions.

Topology Regulated Background Extraction (TRBE) method for eye fundus images

One of the initial steps in the preprocessing of digital fundoscopy images is the identification of pixels containing relevant information. This can be achieved through different approaches, one of them is implementing background extraction, reducing the set of pixels to be analyzed later in the process. In this work, we present a background extraction method for digital fundoscopy images based on computational topology. By interpreting binarized images as cubical complexes and extracting their homological groups in 1 and 2 dimensions we identify a subset of luminescence values that can be used to binarize the original grayscale image, obtaining a mask to achieve background extraction. This method is robust to noise and suboptimal image quality, facilitating the analytical pipeline in the context of computer aided diagnosis approaches. This method facilitates the segmentation of the background of a digital fundoscopy image, which allows further methods to focus on pixels with relevant information (eye fundus). This tool is best suited to be implemented in the preprocessing stages of the analytical pipeline by computational ophthalmology specialists.•It is robust to noise and low-quality images.•Output provides an ideal scenario for down-the-line analysis by facilitating only relevant pixels in a digital fundoscopy.

Seeking an optimal approach for Computer-aided Diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism

Pulmonary Embolism (PE) represents a thrombus (“blood clot”), usually originating from a lower extremity vein, that travels to the blood vessels in the lung, causing vascular obstruction and in some patients death. This disorder is commonly diagnosed using Computed Tomography Pulmonary Angiography (CTPA). Deep learning holds great promise for the Computer-aided Diagnosis (CAD) of PE. However, numerous deep learning methods, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Transformer-based models, exist for a given task, causing great confusion regarding the development of CAD systems for PE. To address this confusion, we present a comprehensive analysis of competing deep learning methods applicable to PE diagnosis based on four datasets. First, we use the RSNA PE dataset, which includes (weak) slice-level and exam-level labels, for PE classification and diagnosis, respectively. At the slice level, we compare CNNs with the Vision Transformer (ViT) and the Swin Transformer. We also investigate the impact of self-supervised versus (fully) supervised ImageNet pre-training, and transfer learning over training models from scratch. Additionally, at the exam level, we compare sequence model learning with our proposed transformer-based architecture, Embedding-based ViT (E-ViT). For the second and third datasets, we utilize the CAD-PE Challenge Dataset and Ferdowsi University of Mashad’s PE Dataset, where we convert (strong) clot-level masks into slice-level annotations to evaluate the optimal CNN model for slice-level PE classification. Finally, we use our in-house PE-CAD dataset, which contains (strong) clot-level masks. Here, we investigate the impact of our vessel-oriented image representations and self-supervised pre-training on PE false positive reduction at the clot level across image dimensions (2D, 2.5D, and 3D). Our experiments show that (1) transfer learning boosts performance despite differences between photographic images and CTPA scans; (2) self-supervised pre-training can surpass (fully) supervised pre-training; (3) transformer-based models demonstrate comparable performance but slower convergence compared with CNNs for slice-level PE classification; (4) model trained on the RSNA PE dataset demonstrates promising performance when tested on unseen datasets for slice-level PE classification; (5) our E-ViT framework excels in handling variable numbers of slices and outperforms sequence model learning for exam-level diagnosis; and (6) vessel-oriented image representation and self-supervised pre-training both enhance performance for PE false positive reduction across image dimensions. Our optimal approach surpasses state-of-the-art results on the RSNA PE dataset, enhancing AUC by 0.62% (slice-level) and 2.22% (exam-level). On our in-house PE-CAD dataset, 3D vessel-oriented images improve performance from 80.07% to 91.35%, a remarkable 11% gain. Codes are available at GitHub.com/JLiangLab/CAD_PE.

Feature Fusion of Time-frequency and Deep Learning Features for Epileptic Seizure Detection using EEG Signals

A persistent brain's neurological state is epilepsy, characterised by recurring seizure. Brain electrical activity is measured using EEG signals, which can be used to detect and diagnose significant brain problems such as Epilepsy, Autism, Alzheimer’s etc. However, manual EEG data processing is time-consuming, requires highly skilled clinicians, and is associated with low inter-rater reliability (IRA). A computer-aided diagnosis approach for epileptic seizure detection from multichannel EEG recordings by fusing the time-frequency features and the deep learning features extracted from Convolutional Neural Network-Gated Recurrent Unit (CNN-GRU) model using canonical correlation analysis (CCA) method is provided in this study. Deep Learning features are extracted using CNN-GRU layers, motivated by recent advancements in image classification and optimised for use with EEG data. We have also extracted time-frequency features such as spectral entropies and Sub Band energies from Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and Hilbert Marginal Spectrum (HMS). We used CHBMIT dataset to carry out the results and showed that the method proposed for fusing the time-frequency features and deep learning has given better performance.

Nerve Root Compression Analysis to Find Lumbar Spine Stenosis on MRI Using CNN.

Lumbar spine stenosis (LSS) is caused by low back pain that exerts pressure on the nerves in the spine. Detecting LSS is a significantly important yet difficult task. It is detected by analyzing the area of the anteroposterior diameter of the patient's lumbar spine. Currently, the versatility and accuracy of LSS segmentation algorithms are limited. The objective of this research is to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to automatically categorize LSS. This study presents a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based method to detect LSS using MRI images. Radiological grading is performed on a publicly available dataset. Four regions of interest (ROIs) are determined to diagnose LSS with normal, mild, moderate, and severe gradings. The experiments are performed on 1545 axial-view MRI images. Furthermore, two datasets-multi-ROI and single-ROI-are created. For training and testing, an 80:20 ratio of randomly selected labeled datasets is used, with fivefold cross-validation. The results of the proposed model reveal a 97.01% accuracy for multi-ROI and 97.71% accuracy for single-ROI. The proposed computer-aided diagnosis approach can significantly improve diagnostic accuracy in everyday clinical workflows to assist medical experts in decision making. The proposed CNN-based MRI image segmentation approach shows its efficacy on a variety of datasets. Results are compared to existing state-of-the-art studies, indicating the superior performance of the proposed approach.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Various Diseases Using Ultrasonography Images.

This paper is an exhaustive survey of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system-based automatic detection of several diseases from ultrasound images. CAD plays a vital role in the automatic and early detection of diseases. Health monitoring, medical database management, and picture archiving systems became very feasible with CAD, assisting radiologists in making decisions over any imaging modality. Imaging modalities mainly rely on machine learning and deep learning algorithms for early and accurate disease detection. CAD approaches are described in this paper in terms of their significant tools; digital image processing (DIP), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL). Ultrasonography (USG) already has many advantages over other imaging modalities; therefore, CAD analysis of USG assists radiologists in studying it more clearly, leading to USG application over various body parts. So, in this paper, we have included a review of those major diseases whose detection supports "ML algorithm" based diagnosis from USG images. ML algorithm follows feature extraction, selection, and classification in the required class. The literature survey of these diseases is grouped into the carotid region, transabdominal & pelvic region, musculoskeletal region, and thyroid region. These regions also differ in the types of transducers employed for scanning. Based on the literature survey, we have concluded that texture-based extracted features passed to support vector machine (SVM) classifier results in good classification accuracy. However, the emerging deep learning-based disease classification trend signifies more preciseness and automation for feature extraction and classification. Still, classification accuracy depends on the number of images used for training the model. This motivated us to highlight some of the significant shortcomings of automated disease diagnosis techniques. Research challenges in CAD-based automatic diagnosis system design and limitations in imaging through USG modality are mentioned as separate topics in this paper, indicating future scope or improvement in this field. The success rate of machine learning approaches in USG-based automatic disease detection motivated this review paper to describe different parameters behind machine learning and deep learning algorithms towards improving USG diagnostic performance.

Tuberculosis chest X-ray detection using CNN-based hybrid segmentation and classification approach

Tuberculosis still significantly impacts the world's population, with more than 10 million people getting sick each year. Researchers have focused on developing computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) technology based on X-ray imaging to support the identification of tuberculosis, and deep learning is a popular and efficient method. However, deep learning-based CAD approaches usually ignore the relationship between the two vision tasks of specific region segmentation and classification. In this research, we introduced a novel TB-UNet, which is based on dilated fusion block (DF) and Attention block (AB) block for accurate segmentation of lungs regions and achieved the highest results in terms of Precision (0.9574), Recall (0.9512), and F1score (0.8988), IoU (0.8168) and Accuracy (0.9770). We also proposed TB-DenseNet which is based on five dual convolution blocks, DenseNet-169 layer, and a feature fusion block for the precise classification of tuberculosis images. The experiments have been performed on three chest X-ray (CXR) datasets, segmented images, and original images are fed to TB-DenseNet for better classification. Furthermore, the proposed method is tested against simultaneously three different diseases, such as Pneumonia, COVID-19, and Tuberculous. The highest results are achieved in terms of Precision (0.9567), Recall (0.9510), F1score (0.9538), and Accuracy (0.9510). The achieved results reflect that our proposed method produces the highest accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art methods. The source code is available at: https://github.com/ahmedeqbal/TB-DenseNet.

Convolution Neural Networks and Self-Attention Learners for Alzheimer Dementia Diagnosis from Brain MRI.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) can help in the early detection of associated cognitive impairment. The aim of this work is to improve the automatic detection of dementia in MRI brain data. For this purpose, we used an established pipeline that includes the registration, slicing, and classification steps. The contribution of this research was to investigate for the first time, to our knowledge, three current and promising deep convolutional models (ResNet, DenseNet, and EfficientNet) and two transformer-based architectures (MAE and DeiT) for mapping input images to clinical diagnosis. To allow a fair comparison, the experiments were performed on two publicly available datasets (ADNI and OASIS) using multiple benchmarks obtained by changing the number of slices per subject extracted from the available 3D voxels. The experiments showed that very deep ResNet and DenseNet models performed better than the shallow ResNet and VGG versions tested in the literature. It was also found that transformer architectures, and DeiT in particular, produced the best classification results and were more robust to the noise added by increasing the number of slices. A significant improvement in accuracy (up to 7%) was achieved compared to the leading state-of-the-art approaches, paving the way for the use of CAD approaches in real-world applications.

Diabetic Retinopathy Grading using Blended Deep Learning

Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes that is mainly caused by the damage of the blood vessels located in the retina. Retinal screening contributes to early detection and treatment of diabetic retinopathy. DR has five stages, namely healthy, mild, moderate, severe and proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Computer-aided diagnosis approaches are needed to allow an early detection and treatment. Several automated deep learning (DL) based approaches have been proven to be a powerful tool for DR grading. However, these approaches are usually based on one DL architecture only which could produce over-fitted results. Another identified problem is the use of imbalanced datasets. In this paper, we proposed a blended deep learning approach obtained by training several individual DL models, using a 5-fold cross-validation technique and combining their predictions in a final score. This blended model highlights each individual model where it performs best and discredits where it performs poorly, increasing the robustness of the results. The experiments were conducted on a balanced DDR dataset containing 33310 retina fundus images equally distributed for the DR grades. An explainability algorithm was also used to show the efficiency of the proposed approach in detecting DR signs.

Review on Deep Learning-Based CAD Systems for Breast Cancer Diagnosis.

Breast Cancer (BC) is a major health issue in women of the age group above 45. Identification of BC at an earlier stage is important to reduce the mortality rate. Image-based noninvasive methods are used for early detection and for providing appropriate treatment. Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) schemes can support radiologists in making correct decisions. Computational intelligence paradigms such as Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) have been used in the recent past in CAD systems to accelerate diagnosis. ML techniques are feature driven and require a high amount of domain expertise. However, DL approaches make decisions directly from the image. The current advancement in DL approaches for early diagnosis of BC is the motivation behind this review. This article throws light on various types of CAD approaches used in BC detection and diagnosis. A survey on DL, Transfer Learning, and DL-based CAD approaches for the diagnosis of BC is presented in detail. A comparative study on techniques, datasets, and performance metrics used in state-of-the-art literature in BC diagnosis is also summarized. The proposed work provides a review of recent advancements in DL techniques for enhancing BC diagnosis.

Improve follicular thyroid carcinoma diagnosis using computer aided diagnosis system on ultrasound images.

We aim to leverage deep learning to develop a computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system toward helping radiologists in the diagnosis of follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) on thyroid ultrasonography. A dataset of 1159 images, consisting of 351 images from 138 FTC patients and 808 images from 274 benign follicular-pattern nodule patients, was divided into a balanced and unbalanced dataset, and used to train and test the CAD system based on a transfer learning of a residual network. Six radiologists participated in the experiments to verify whether and how much the proposed CAD system helps to improve their performance. On the balanced dataset, the CAD system achieved 0.892 of area under the ROC (AUC). The accuracy, recall, precision, and F1-score of the CAD method were 84.66%, 84.66%, 84.77%, 84.65%, while those of the junior and senior radiologists were 56.82%, 56.82%, 56.95%, 56.62% and 64.20%, 64.20%, 64.35%, 64.11% respectively. With the help of CAD, the metrics of the junior and senior radiologists improved to 62.81%, 62.81%, 62.85%, 62.79% and 73.86%, 73.86%, 74.00%, 73.83%. The results almost repeated on the unbalanced dataset. The results show the proposed CAD approach can not only achieve better performance than radiologists, but also significantly improve the radiologists' diagnosis of FTC. The performances of the CAD system indicate it is a reliable reference for preoperative diagnosis of FTC, and might assist the development of a fast, accessible screening method for FTC.

Lymph Node Metastasis Prediction From Whole Slide Images With Transformer-Guided Multiinstance Learning and Knowledge Transfer.

The gold standard for diagnosing lymph node metastasis of papillary thyroid carcinoma is to analyze the whole slide histopathological images (WSIs). Due to the large size of WSIs, recent computer-aided diagnosis approaches adopt the multi-instance learning (MIL) strategy and the key part is how to effectively aggregate the information of different instances (patches). In this paper, a novel transformer-guided framework is proposed to predict lymph node metastasis from WSIs, where we incorporate the transformer mechanism to improve the accuracy from three different aspects. First, we propose an effective transformer-based module for discriminative patch feature extraction, including a lightweight feature extractor with a pruned transformer (Tiny-ViT) and a clustering-based instance selection scheme. Next, we propose a new Transformer-MIL module to capture the relationship of different discriminative patches with sparse distribution on WSIs and better nonlinearly aggregate patch-level features into the slide-level prediction. Considering that the slide-level annotation is relatively limited to training a robust Transformer-MIL, we utilize the pathological relationship between the primary tumor and its lymph node metastasis and develop an effective attention-based mutual knowledge distillation (AMKD) paradigm. Experimental results on our collected WSI dataset demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed Transformer-MIL and attention-based knowledge distillation. Our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by over 2.72% in AUC (area under the curve).

Evolution of Machine Learning in Tuberculosis Diagnosis: A Review of Deep Learning-Based Medical Applications

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that has been a major menace to human health globally, causing millions of deaths yearly. Well-timed diagnosis and treatment are an arch to full recovery of the patient. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) has been a hopeful choice for TB diagnosis. Many CAD approaches using machine learning have been applied for TB diagnosis, specific to the artificial intelligence (AI) domain, which has led to the resurgence of AI in the medical field. Deep learning (DL), a major branch of AI, provides bigger room for diagnosing deadly TB disease. This review is focused on the limitations of conventional TB diagnostics and a broad description of various machine learning algorithms and their applications in TB diagnosis. Furthermore, various deep learning methods integrated with other systems such as neuro-fuzzy logic, genetic algorithm, and artificial immune systems are discussed. Finally, multiple state-of-the-art tools such as CAD4TB, Lunit INSIGHT, qXR, and InferRead DR Chest are summarized to view AI-assisted future aspects in TB diagnosis.

A Deep Learning Computer-Aided Diagnosis Approach for Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer is a gigantic burden on humanity, causing the loss of enormous numbers of lives and amounts of money. It is the world’s leading type of cancer among women and a leading cause of mortality and morbidity. The histopathological examination of breast tissue biopsies is the gold standard for diagnosis. In this paper, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system based on deep learning is developed to ease the pathologist’s mission. For this target, five pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) models are analyzed and tested—Xception, DenseNet201, InceptionResNetV2, VGG19, and ResNet152—with the help of data augmentation techniques, and a new approach is introduced for transfer learning. These models are trained and tested with histopathological images obtained from the BreakHis dataset. Multiple experiments are performed to analyze the performance of these models through carrying out magnification-dependent and magnification-independent binary and eight-class classifications. The Xception model has shown promising performance through achieving the highest classification accuracies for all the experiments. It has achieved a range of classification accuracies from 93.32% to 98.99% for magnification-independent experiments and from 90.22% to 100% for magnification-dependent experiments.

Automated detection of heart valve disorders with time-frequency and deep features on PCG signals

Heart valve diseases (HVDs) can cause cardiac arrhythmias, heart attacks, and sudden cardiac death if not diagnosed early. Therefore, the detection of HVDs is critical in order to avoid heart-related mortality. The focus of this research is to establish an efficient computer-aided diagnosis approach that detects HVDs using phonocardiogram (PCG) signals. The proposed approach uses traditional time–frequency and deep features with machine learning models. The time–frequency features are extracted from non-linear measurements using discrete wavelet transform (DWT), wavelet packet transform (WPT), perceptual wavelet packet transform (PWPT) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) methods. Deep features are extracted from VGG16, ResNet50 and MobileNetV2 pre-trained CNN models, and multilayer extreme learning machine (ML-ELM) model using scalogram images of PCG signals. Recursive feature elimination (RFE) algorithm is applied to all features and the most distinctive features are selected. Experimental results show that the PWPT + EMD features selected by RFE and the random forest (RF) classification model achieve the highest performance with accuracy of 99.4%, Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) and G-mean of 99.3%. In another proposed approach, ML-ELM deep features selected by RFE algorithm and RF classification model provide accuracy and G-mean of 98.9%, and MCC values of 98.6%. It was observed that the time–frequency features have outperformed compared to deep features for the detection of HVDs. The proposed approach is compared with the existing studies and it has obtained higher performance values ​​than the approaches using the same database. The proposed approach can be considered as an easily integrated system on the embedded platform.

Comprehensive Study for Breast Cancer Using Deep Learning and Traditional Machine Learning

Comprehensive Study for Breast Cancer Using Deep Learning and Traditional Machine Learning

COVID-19 Diagnosis from Chest X-ray Images Using a Robust Multi-Resolution Analysis Siamese Neural Network with Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network.

Chest X-ray (CXR) is becoming a useful method in the evaluation of coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19). Despite the global spread of COVID-19, utilizing a computer-aided diagnosis approach for COVID-19 classification based on CXR images could significantly reduce the clinician burden. There is no doubt that low resolution, noise and irrelevant annotations in chest X-ray images are a major constraint to the performance of AI-based COVID-19 diagnosis. While a few studies have made huge progress, they underestimate these bottlenecks. In this study, we propose a super-resolution-based Siamese wavelet multi-resolution convolutional neural network called COVID-SRWCNN for COVID-19 classification using chest X-ray images. Concretely, we first reconstruct high-resolution (HR) counterparts from low-resolution (LR) CXR images in order to enhance the quality of the dataset for improved performance of our model by proposing a novel enhanced fast super-resolution convolutional neural network (EFSRCNN) to capture texture details in each given chest X-ray image. Exploiting a mutual learning approach, the HR images are passed to the proposed Siamese wavelet multi-resolution convolutional neural network to learn the high-level features for COVID-19 classification. We validate the proposed COVID-SRWCNN model on public-source datasets, achieving accuracy of 98.98%. Our screening technique achieves 98.96% AUC, 99.78% sensitivity, 98.53% precision, and 98.86% specificity. Owing to the fact that COVID-19 chest X-ray datasets are low in quality, experimental results show that our proposed algorithm obtains up-to-date performance that is useful for COVID-19 screening.

Pulmonary lesion subtypes recognition of COVID-19 from radiomics data with three-dimensional texture characterization in computed tomography images

BackgroundThe COVID-19 disease is putting unprecedented pressure on the global healthcare system. The CT (computed tomography) examination as a auxiliary confirmed diagnostic method can help clinicians quickly detect lesions locations of COVID-19 once screening by PCR test. Furthermore, the lesion subtypes classification plays a critical role in the consequent treatment decision. Identifying the subtypes of lesions accurately can help doctors discover changes in lesions in time and better assess the severity of COVID-19.MethodThe most four typical lesion subtypes of COVID-19 are discussed in this paper, which are GGO (ground-glass opacity), cord, solid and subsolid. A computer-aided diagnosis approach of lesion subtype is proposed in this paper. The radiomics data of lesions are segmented from COVID-19 patients CT images with diagnosis and lesions annotations by radiologists. Then the three-dimensional texture descriptors are applied on the volume data of lesions as well as shape and first-order features. The massive feature data are selected by HAFS (hybrid adaptive feature selection) algorithm and a classification model is trained at the same time. The classifier is used to predict lesion subtypes as side decision information for radiologists.ResultsThere are 3734 lesions extracted from the dataset with 319 patients collection and then 189 radiomics features are obtained finally. The random forest classifier is trained with data augmentation that the number of different subtypes of lesions is imbalanced in initial dataset. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the four subtypes of lesions is (93.06%, 96.84%, 99.58%, and 94.30%), the recall is (95.52%, 91.58%, 95.80% and 80.75%) and the f-score is (93.84%, 92.37%, 95.47%, and 84.42%).ConclusionThe three-dimensional radiomics features used in this paper can better express the high-level information of COVID-19 lesions in CT slices. HAFS method aggregates the results of multiple feature selection algorithms intersects with traditional methods to filter out redundant features more accurately. After selection, the subtype of COVID-19 lesion can be judged by inputting the features into the RF (random forest) model, which can help clinicians more accurately identify the subtypes of COVID-19 lesions and provide help for further research.

Performance of a computer aided diagnosis system for SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia based on ultrasound images

PurposeIn this study we aimed to leverage deep learning to develop a computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system toward helping radiologists in the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 virus syndrome on Lung ultrasonography (LUS). MethodA CAD system is developed based on a transfer learning of a residual network (ResNet) to extract features on LUS and help radiologists to distinguish SARS-CoV-2 virus syndrome from healthy and non-SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. A publicly available LUS dataset for SARS-CoV-2 virus syndrome consisting of 3909 images has been employed. Six radiologists with different experiences participated in the experiment. A comprehensive LUS data set was constructed and employed to train and verify the proposed method. Several metrics such as accuracy, recall, precision, and F1-score, are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed CAD approach. The performances of the radiologists with and without the help of CAD are also evaluated quantitively. The p-values of the t-test shows that with the help of the CAD system, both junior and senior radiologists significantly improve their diagnosis performance on both balanced and unbalanced datasets. ResultsExperimental results indicate the proposed CAD approach and the machine features from it can significantly improve the radiologists’ performance in the SARS-CoV-2 virus syndrome diagnosis. With the help of the proposed CAD system, the junior and senior radiologists achieved F1-score values of 91.33% and 95.79% on balanced dataset and 94.20% and 96.43% on unbalanced dataset. The proposed approach is verified on an independent test dataset and reports promising performance. ConclusionsThe proposed CAD system reports promising performance in facilitating radiologists’ diagnosis SARS-CoV-2 virus syndrome and might assist the development of a fast, accessible screening method for pulmonary diseases.