Computer-aided Diagnosis System Research Articles

Medical Image Segmentation

Medical image segmentation is a critical component in the development of computer-aided diagnosis and treatment planning systems. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of recent advances in segmentation techniques applied to various imaging modalities, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Traditional methods such as thresholding, region-growing, and active contours are reviewed alongside contemporary machine learning-based approaches, particularly deep learning models. The survey emphasizes the growing dominance of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and their variants, including U-Net and Fully Convolutional Networks (FCNs), which have shown remarkable success in handling complex medical imaging challenges. Additionally, the paper discusses hybrid methods that combine classical techniques with artificial intelligence to improve accuracy and robustness in segmentation tasks. Key challenges such as class imbalance, boundary delineation, and computational efficiency are also highlighted. Future directions, including the integration of multi-modal data and advancements in self-supervised learning, are explored as potential solutions to overcome current limitations in medical image segmentation.

Differences in regions of interest to identify deeply invasive colorectal cancers: Computer-aided diagnosis vs expert endoscopists.

Background and study aims Diagnostic performance of a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for deep submucosally invasive (T1b) colorectal cancer was excellent, but the "regions of interest" (ROI) within images are not obvious. Class activation mapping (CAM) enables identification of the ROI that CAD utilizes for diagnosis. The purpose of this study was a quantitative investigation of the difference between CAD and endoscopists. Patients and methods Endoscopic images collected for validation of a previous study were used, including histologically proven T1b colorectal cancers (n = 82; morphology: flat 36, polypoid 46; median maximum diameter 20 mm, interquartile range 15-25 mm; histological subtype: papillary 5, well 51, moderate 24, poor 2; location: proximal colon 26, distal colon 27, rectum 29). Application of CAM was limited to one white light endoscopic image (per lesion) to demonstrate findings of T1b cancers. The CAM images were generated from the weights of the previously fine-tuned ResNet50. Two expert endoscopists depicted the ROI in identical images. Concordance of the ROI was rated by intersection over union (IoU) analysis. Results Pixel counts of ROIs were significantly lower using 165K[x103] [108K-227K] than by endoscopists (300K [208K-440K]; P < 0.0001) and median [interquartile] of the IoU was 0.198 [0.024-0.349]. IoU was significantly higher in correctly identified lesions (n = 54, 0.213 [0.116-0.364]) than incorrect ones (n=28, 0.070 [0.000-0.2750, P = 0.033). Concusions IoU was larger in correctly diagnosed T1b colorectal cancers. Optimal annotation of the ROI may be the key to improving diagnostic sensitivity of CAD for T1b colorectal cancers.

Clustering classifier of FRP strengthened concrete beams using superpixels and principal component analysis

Nowadays, the application of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) materials in concrete structures is more and more extended because of their advantages. However, premature and brittle failure caused by debonding of FRP materials from the concrete surface may be critical and needs to be detected at its earliest stages to avoid possible catastrophic events. Digital image correlation (DIC) has been used in the past for the detection of abnormalities from surface digital images. In this work, an efficient computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for damage identification for this type of FRP strengthening is developed. It is based on the combination of cells of strain maps built with a DIC system and an automated clustering classifier optimized with the use of superpixels and principal component analysis. Additionally, preprocessing of the images is also done with some filters to enhance the accuracy of the methodology. The procedure has been validated with experimental results on a progressively damaged FRP externally strengthened beam. Results show that the proposed detection scheme achieves an effective automated classification method for the damage detection of this kind of strengthened specimens. Furthermore, the optimal choice of the subset size, number of superpixels and principal components contributed to the success of the method. Simultaneously, an attempt to quantify damage from the proposed method and its validation with electromechanical impedance method has been developed.

Deep Learning and Handcrafted Features for Thyroid Nodule Classification

ABSTRACTIn this research, we present a refined image‐based computer‐aided diagnosis (CAD) system for thyroid cancer detection using ultrasound imagery. This system integrates a specialized convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture designed to address the unique aspects of thyroid image datasets. Additionally, it incorporates a novel statistical model that utilizes a two‐dimensional random coefficient autoregressive (2D‐RCA) method to precisely analyze the textural characteristics of thyroid images, thereby capturing essential texture‐related information. The classification framework relies on a composite feature vector that combines deep learning features from the CNN and handcrafted features from the 2D‐RCA model, processed through a support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. Our evaluation methodology is structured in three phases: initial assessment of the 2D‐RCA features, analysis of the CNN‐derived features, and a final evaluation of their combined effect on classification performance. Comparative analyses with well‐known networks such as VGG16, VGG19, ResNet50, and AlexNet highlight the superior performance of our approach. The outcomes indicate a significant enhancement in diagnostic accuracy, achieving a classification accuracy of 97.2%, a sensitivity of 84.42%, and a specificity of 95.23%. These results not only demonstrate a notable advancement in the classification of thyroid nodules but also establish a new standard in the efficiency of CAD systems.

Revolutionizing Radiology With Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the field of radiology, offering significant advancements in diagnostic accuracy, workflow efficiency, and patient care. This article explores AI's impact on various subfields of radiology, emphasizing its potential to improve clinical practices and enhance patient outcomes. AI-driven technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP) are playing a pivotal role in automating routine tasks, aiding in early disease detection, and supporting clinical decision-making, allowing radiologists to focus on more complex diagnostic challenges. Key applications of AI in radiology include improving image analysis through computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems, which enhance the detection of abnormalities in imaging, such as tumors. AI tools have demonstrated high accuracy in analyzing medical images, integrating data from multiple imaging modalities such as CT, MRI, and PET to provide comprehensive diagnostic insights. These advancements facilitate personalized treatment planning and complement radiologists' workflows. However, for AI to be fully integrated into radiology workflows, several challenges must be addressed, including ensuring transparency in how AI algorithms work, protecting patient data, and avoiding biases that could affect diverse populations. Developing explainable AI systems that can clearly show how decisions are made is crucial, as is ensuring AI tools can seamlessly fit into existing radiology systems. Collaboration between radiologists, AI developers, and policymakers, alongside strong ethical guidelines and regulatory oversight, will be key to ensuring AI is implemented safely and effectively in clinical practice. Overall, AI holds tremendous promise in revolutionizing radiology. Through its ability to automate complex tasks, enhance diagnostic capabilities, and streamline workflows, AI has the potential to significantly improve the quality and efficiency of radiology practices. Continued research, development, and collaboration will be crucial in unlocking AI's full potential and addressing the challenges that accompany its adoption.

Part-Prototype Models in Medical Imaging: Applications and Current Challenges

Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence have increasingly focused on explainability research. The potential of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) in producing trustworthy computer-aided diagnosis systems and its usage for knowledge discovery are gaining interest in the medical imaging (MI) community to support the diagnostic process and the discovery of image biomarkers. Most of the existing XAI applications in MI are focused on interpreting the predictions made using deep neural networks, typically including attribution techniques with saliency map approaches and other feature visualization methods. However, these are often criticized for providing incorrect and incomplete representations of the black-box models’ behaviour. This highlights the importance of proposing models intentionally designed to be self-explanatory. In particular, part-prototype (PP) models are interpretable-by-design computer vision (CV) models that base their decision process on learning and identifying representative prototypical parts from input images, and they are gaining increasing interest and results in MI applications. However, the medical field has unique characteristics that could benefit from more advanced implementations of these types of architectures. This narrative review summarizes existing PP networks, their application in MI analysis, and current challenges.

Deep Learning With Optical Coherence Tomography for Melanoma Identification and Risk Prediction.

Malignant melanoma is the most severe skin cancer with a rising incidence rate. Several noninvasive image techniques and computer-aided diagnosis systems have been developed to help find melanoma in its early stages. However, most previous research utilized dermoscopic images to build a diagnosis model, and only a few used prospective datasets. This study develops and evaluates a convolutional neural network (CNN) for melanoma identification and risk prediction using optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging of mice skin. Longitudinal tests are performed on four animal models: melanoma mice, dysplastic nevus mice, and their respective controls. The CNN classifies melanoma and healthy tissues with high sensitivity (0.99) and specificity (0.98) and also assigns a risk score to each image based on the probability of melanoma presence, which may facilitate early diagnosis and management of melanoma in clinical settings.

Semantic Segmentation of the Prostate Based on Onefold and Joint Multimodal Medical Images Using YOLOv4 and U-Net

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is increasing in importance in prostate cancer diagnosis due to the high accuracy and quality of the examination procedure. However, this process requires a time-consuming analysis of the results. Currently, machine vision is widely used in many areas. It enables automation and support in radiological studies. Successful detection of primary prostate tumors depends on the effective segmentation of the prostate itself. At times, a CT scan may be performed; alternatively, MRI may be the selected option. The data always reach a bottleneck stage. This paper presents the effective training of deep learning models to segment the prostate based on onefold and multimodal medical images. This approach supports the computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for radiologists as the first step in cancer exams. A comparison of two approaches designed for prostate segmentation is described. The first combines YOLOv4, the object detection neural network, and U-Net for a semantic segmentation based on onefold modality MRI images. The second presents the same method trained on multimodal images—a CT and MRI mixed dataset. The learning process was carried out in a cloud environment using GPU cards. The experiments are based on data from 120 patients who have undergone MRI and CT examinations. Several metrics evaluated the trained models. In the prostate semantic segmentation process, better results were achieved by mixed MRI with CT datasets. The best model achieved the value of 0.9685 for the Sørensen–Dice coefficient for the threshold value of 0.6.

A New Computer-Aided Diagnosis System for Breast Cancer Detection from Thermograms Using Metaheuristic Algorithms and Explainable AI

Advances in the early detection of breast cancer and treatment improvements have significantly increased survival rates. Traditional screening methods, including mammography, MRI, ultrasound, and biopsies, while effective, often come with high costs and risks. Recently, thermal imaging has gained attention due to its minimal risks compared to mammography, although it is not widely adopted as a primary detection tool since it depends on identifying skin temperature changes and lesions. The advent of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) has enhanced the effectiveness of breast cancer detection and diagnosis using this technology. In this study, a novel interpretable computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system for breast cancer detection is proposed, leveraging Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) throughout its various phases. To achieve these goals, we proposed a new multi-objective optimization approach named the Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (HPSO) and Hybrid Spider Monkey Optimization algorithm (HSMO). These algorithms simultaneously combined the continuous and binary representations of PSO and SMO to effectively manage trade-offs between accuracy, feature selection, and hyperparameter tuning. We evaluated several CAD models and investigated the impact of handcrafted methods such as Local Binary Patterns (LBP), Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG), Gabor Filters, and Edge Detection. We further shed light on the effect of feature selection and optimization on feature attribution and model decision-making processes using the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) framework, with a particular emphasis on cancer classification using the DMR-IR dataset. The results of our experiments demonstrate in all trials that the performance of the model is improved. With HSMO, our models achieved an accuracy of 98.27% and F1-score of 98.15% while selecting only 25.78% of the HOG features. This approach not only boosts the performance of CAD models but also ensures comprehensive interpretability. This method emerges as a promising and transparent tool for early breast cancer diagnosis.

Automated differentiation of calcifications and their clusters on the mammography image: the outcomes of the computer aided diagnosis system module

INTRODUCTION: Previously we developed the computer aided detection system (CAD) for mammography MammCheck II that increased the detection rate of small and difficult to detect breast carcinomas (BC). However this system was not specifically designed for calcification detection and discrimination. On the other hand, the calcifications had no influence on the CAD capability to detect BCs that appeared as a focal lesions.OBJECTIVE: To develop the approach for automated differentiation of benign and suspicious calcifications on the mammography images and assess its clinical value.MATERIALS AND METHODS: For the developed software testing we used a set of 390 mammography images with calcifications of all possible types (278 images with benign and 112 images with suspicious calcifications). For classification we used linear support vector machine (SVM) model, that was trained on the set of 126 images (70 — benign and 56 — suspicious). We developed two SVM models: with no vascular calcification analysis and with it. Statistics: for comparison between the normally distributed samples we used the Student’s T-test, for non-normally distributed — Wilcoxon signed-rank or Chi-square tests. For correlation testing of normally distributed samples the Paerson coefficient was calculated, for non-normally distributed samples — the Spearman or Kendall correlation coefficients. The statistical significance corresponded to Р-values &lt;0,05.RESULTS: During the testing of the first model version with no vascular calcification analysis we discovered the similarity of small early vascular calcifications and the suspicious ones. As a result this model falsely classified 14 of 23 (60.87%) vascular calcification clusters as suspicious. Therefore the model was improved. The final discrimination results for all calcification types (both benign and suspicious) obtained with the help of improved model were the following: true positive conclusions — 375/390 (96.15%), false positive conclusions — 15/390 (3.84%). In both cases when suspicious calcifications were classified as benign the wrong results were een only on one mammography view. At the same time, on another view the suspicious calcifications were correctly classified.DISCUSSION: During the CAD development it seems important not only mark the suspicious areas but also suppress false positive markings corresponding to the obviously benign lesions. However it is important during this operation not to suppress the true positive markings. Therefore such systems are inevitably characterized by a certain shift to decreased prognostic value of suspicious markings at the expense of the highest possible prognostic value of benign markings. In our viewpoint, the developed approach meets this requirement. Moreover, its integration into the CAD allows to suppress the markings of soft tissue lesions associated with typical benign calcifications, appeared on the previous processing steps. This capability may decrease the false positive rate of the main CAD module.CONCLUSION: The developed approach to benign and suspicious calcification discrimination (version with vascular calcification analysis) on the mammography image provided the sensitivity — 98.21%, specificity — 95.32%, negative predictive value (benign marking) — 99.25%, positive predictive value (suspicious marking) — 89.43%.

A systematic literature review on pancreas segmentation from traditional to non-supervised techniques in abdominal medical images

Abdominal organs play a significant role in regulating various functional systems. Any impairment in its functioning can lead to cancerous diseases. Diagnosing these diseases mainly relies on radiologists’ subjective assessment, which varies according to professional abilities and clinical experience. Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system is designed to assist clinicians in identifying various pathological changes. Hence, automatic pancreas segmentation is a vital input to the CAD system in the diagnosis of cancer at its early stages. Automatic segmentation is achieved through traditional methods like atlas-based and statistical models, and nowadays, it is achieved through artificial intelligence approaches like machine learning and deep learning using various imaging modalities. This study investigates and analyses the various state-of-the-art multi-organ and pancreas segmentation approaches to identify the research gaps and future perspectives for the research community. The objective is achieved by framing the research questions using the PICOC framework and then selecting 140 research articles using a systematic process through the Covidence tool to conclude the answers to the respective questions. The literature search has been conducted on five databases of original studies published from 2003 to 2023. Initially, the literature analysis is presented in terms of publication, and the comparative analysis of the current study is presented with existing review studies. Then, existing studies are analyzed, focusing on semi-automatic and automatic multi-organ segmentation and pancreas segmentation, using various learning methods. Finally, the various critical issues, the research gaps and the future perspectives of segmentation methods based on published evidence are summarized.

A Modified Deep Semantic Segmentation Model for Analysis of Whole Slide Skin Images

Automated segmentation of biomedical image has been recognized as an important step in computer-aided diagnosis systems for detection of abnormalities. Despite its importance, the segmentation process remains an open challenge due to variations in color, texture, shape diversity and boundaries. Semantic segmentation often requires deeper neural networks to achieve higher accuracy, making the segmentation model more complex and slower. Due to the need to process a large number of biomedical images, more efficient and cheaper image processing techniques for accurate segmentation are needed. In this article, we present a modified deep semantic segmentation model that utilizes the backbone of EfficientNet-B3 along with UNet for reliable segmentation. We trained our model on Non-melanoma skin cancer segmentation for histopathology dataset to divide the image in 12 different classes for segmentation. Our method outperforms the existing literature with an increase in average class accuracy from 79 to 83%. Our approach also shows an increase in overall accuracy from 85 to 94%.

Improving the diagnostic strategy for thyroid nodules: a combination of artificial intelligence-based computer-aided diagnosis system and shear wave elastography.

Thyroid nodules are highly prevalent in the general population, posing a clinical challenge in accurately distinguishing between benign and malignant cases. This study aimed to investigate the diagnostic performance of different strategies, utilizing a combination of a computer-aided diagnosis system (AmCAD) and shear wave elastography (SWE) imaging, to effectively differentiate benign and malignant thyroid nodules in ultrasonography. A total of 126 thyroid nodules with pathological confirmation were prospectively included in this study. The AmCAD was utilized to analyze the ultrasound imaging characteristics of the nodules, while the SWE was employed to measure their stiffness in both transverse and longitudinal thyroid scans. Twelve diagnostic patterns were formed by combining AmCAD diagnosis and SWE values, including isolation, series, parallel, and integration. The diagnostic performance was assessed using the receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the curve (AUC). Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, missed malignancy rate, and unnecessary biopsy rate were also determined. Various diagnostic schemes have shown specific advantages in terms of diagnostic performance. Overall, integrating AmCAD with SWE imaging in the transverse scan yielded the most favorable diagnostic performance, achieving an AUC of 72.2% (95% confidence interval (CI): 63.0-81.5%), outperforming other diagnostic schemes. Furthermore, in the subgroup analysis of nodules measuring <2 cm or 2-4 cm, the integrated scheme consistently exhibited promising diagnostic performance, with AUCs of 74.2% (95% CI: 61.9-86.4%) and 77.4% (95% CI: 59.4-95.3%) respectively, surpassing other diagnostic schemes. The integrated scheme also effectively addressed thyroid nodule management by reducing the missed malignancy rate to 9.5% and unnecessary biopsy rate to 22.2%. The integration of AmCAD and SWE imaging in the transverse thyroid scan significantly enhances the diagnostic performance for distinguishing benign and malignant thyroid nodules. This strategy offers clinicians the advantage of obtaining more accurate clinical diagnoses and making well-informed decisions regarding patient management.

Empowering Brain Tumor Diagnosis through Explainable Deep Learning

Brain tumors are among the most lethal diseases, and early detection is crucial for improving patient outcomes. Currently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the most effective method for early brain tumor detection due to its superior imaging quality for soft tissues. However, manual analysis of brain MRI scans is prone to errors, largely influenced by the radiologists’ experience and fatigue. To address these challenges, computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are more significant. These advanced computer vision techniques such as deep learning provide accurate predictions based on medical images, enhancing diagnostic precision and reliability. This paper presents a novel CAD framework for multi-class brain tumor classification. The framework employs six pre-trained deep learning models as the base and incorporates comprehensive data preprocessing and augmentation strategies to enhance computational efficiency. To address issues related to transparency and interpretability in deep learning models, Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) is utilized to visualize the decision-making processes involved in tumor classification from MRI scans. Additionally, a user-friendly Brain Tumor Detection System has been developed using Streamlit, demonstrating its practical applicability in real-world settings and providing a valuable tool for clinicians. All simulation results are derived from a public benchmark dataset, showing that the proposed framework achieves state-of-the-art performance, with accuracy approaching 99% in ResNet-50, Xception, and InceptionV3 models.

NAS FD Lung: A novel lung assist diagnostic system based on neural architecture search

In the detection and recognition of lung nodules, pulmonary nodules vary in size and shape and contain many similar tissues and organs around them, leading to the problems of both missed detection and false detection in existing detection algorithms. Designing proprietary detection and recognition networks manually requires substantial professional expertise. This process is time-consuming and labour-intensive and leads to issues like parameter redundancy and improper feature selection. Therefore, this paper proposes a new pulmonary CAD (computer-aided diagnosis) system for pulmonary nodules, NAS FD Lung (Using the NAS approach to search deep FPN and DPN networks), that can automatically learn and generate a deep learning network tailored to pulmonary nodule detection and recognition task requirements. NAS FD Lung aims to use automatic search to generate deep learning networks in the auxiliary diagnosis of pulmonary nodules to replace the manual design of deep learning networks. NAS FD Lung comprises two automatic search networks: BM NAS-FPN (Using NAS methods to search for deep FPN structures with Binary operation and Matrix multiplication fusion methods) network for nodule detection and NAS-A-DPN (Using the NAS approach to search deep DPN networks with attention mechanism) for nodule identification. The proposed technique is tested on the LUNA16 dataset, and the experimental results show that the model is superior to many existing state-of-the-art approaches. The detection accuracy of lung nodules is 98.23%. Regarding the lung nodules classification, the accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, and AUC values achieved 96.32%,97.14%,95.82%, and 98.33%, respectively.

Multi-label semantic segmentation of magnetic resonance images of the prostate gland

Prostate segmentation is a substantial factor in the diagnostic pathway of suspicious prostate lesions. Medical doctors are assisted by computer-aided detection and diagnosis systems systems and methods derived from artificial intelligence deep learning-based systems have to be trained on existing data. Especially freely available labeled prostate magnetic resonance imaging data is rare. With regard to this problem, we show a method to combine two existing small datasets to form a bigger one. We present a data processing pipeline consisting of a cascaded network architecture that is able to perform multi-label semantic segmentation, hence, capable of classifying each pixel in a T2\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ extrm{T}_{2}$$\\end{document}-weighted image not only to one class but to a subset of the prostate zones and classes of interest. This delivers richer information such as overlapping zones that are key to medical radiological examination. Additionally, we describe how to integrate expert knowledge in our deep learning system. To increase data variety for training and evaluation we use image augmentation on our two datasets—a freely available dataset and our new open-source dataset. To combine the datasets we denoise the contourings in our dataset by using an effective yet simple algorithm based on standard computer vision methods only. The performance of the presented methodology is compared and evaluated using the dice score metric and 5-fold cross-validation on all datasets. Although we trained on tiny datasets our method achieves excellent segmentation quality and is even able to detect prostate cancer. Our method to combine the two datasets reduces segmentation errors and increases data variety. The proposed architecture significantly improves performance by including expert knowledge via feature-map concatenation. On the initiative for collaborative computer vision benchmarking dataset we achieve on average dice scores of approximately 91% for the whole prostate gland, 67% for the peripheral zone and 75% for the prostate central gland. We find that image augmentation except contrast limited adaptive histogram equalisation did not have much influence on the segmentation quality. Derived and enhanced from existing methods we present an approach that is able to deliver multi-label semantic segmentation results for prostate magnetic resonance imaging. This approach is simple and could be applied to other applications of deep learning as well. It improves the segmentation results by a large margin. Once tweaked to the data, our denoising and combination algorithm delivers robust and accurate results even on data with segmentation errors.

RFMiD: Retinal Image Analysis for multi-Disease Detection challenge

In the last decades, many publicly available large fundus image datasets have been collected for diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration, and a few other frequent pathologies. These publicly available datasets were used to develop a computer-aided disease diagnosis system by training deep learning models to detect these frequent pathologies. One challenge limiting the adoption of a such system by the ophthalmologist is, computer-aided disease diagnosis system ignores sight-threatening rare pathologies such as central retinal artery occlusion or anterior ischemic optic neuropathy and others that ophthalmologists currently detect. Aiming to advance the state-of-the-art in automatic ocular disease classification of frequent diseases along with the rare pathologies, a grand challenge on “Retinal Image Analysis for multi-Disease Detection” was organized in conjunction with the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI - 2021). This paper, reports the challenge organization, dataset, top-performing participants solutions, evaluation measures, and results based on a new “Retinal Fundus Multi-disease Image Dataset” (RFMiD). There were two principal sub-challenges: disease screening (i.e. presence versus absence of pathology — a binary classification problem) and disease/pathology classification (a 28-class multi-label classification problem). It received a positive response from the scientific community with 74 submissions by individuals/teams that effectively entered in this challenge. The top-performing methodologies utilized a blend of data-preprocessing, data augmentation, pre-trained model, and model ensembling. This multi-disease (frequent and rare pathologies) detection will enable the development of generalizable models for screening the retina, unlike the previous efforts that focused on the detection of specific diseases.

Advanced ECG Monitoring: Machine Learning And Robotics For Real-Time Health Management

Cardiovascular diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent due to lifestyle factors such as poor diet, lack of exercise, and conditions like diabetes and hypertension. Electrocardiography (ECG) is a widely used diagnostic tool for detecting various heart conditions, including arrhythmias and myocardial infarction. However, manual analysis of ECG signals is often subjective, time-consuming, and prone to variability. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a comprehensive system that integrates an Arduino-based ECG acquisition module with neural networks for automatic analysis and a robotic system for autonomous sensor placement and intervention. The main objective is to create a smart, real-time ECG monitoring and Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system capable of early detection and management of heart diseases. The system utilizes machine learning and deep learning techniques to enhance diagnostic accuracy, focusing on implementing a neural network model for ECG classification. A robotic arm is also integrated into the system to ensure precise sensor placement and emergency response

FocalNeXt: A ConvNeXt augmented FocalNet architecture for lung cancer classification from CT-scan images

Early and accurate diagnosis of lung cancer, a life-threatening disease, is critical to the successful treatment of patients with the disease. On the other hand, it is well known that the integration of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems into the diagnostic workflow facilitates the process and improves the diagnostic results of automated systems by reducing the difficulties associated with human observation. In this paper, we present FocalNeXt, a new ConvNeXt-augmented FocalNet architecture specifically designed for automated lung cancer detection from computed tomography (CT) scan images. By combining the strong attention mechanism of FocalNet and the feature extraction mechanism of ConvNeXt within the vision transformer paradigm, FocalNeXt aims to improve diagnostic accuracy. Our comprehensive evaluation of a publicly available Iraq-Oncology Teaching Hospital/National Center for Cancer Diseases (IQ-OTH/NCCD) CT-scan dataset includes rigorous comparisons and an ablation study. FocalNeXt achieved an accuracy of 99.81%, outperforming the state-of-the-art methods. The model also excelled in sensitivity (99.78%), recall (99.36%), and F1-score (99.56%), positioning FocalNeXt as a leading model for lung cancer detection. The ablation study further demonstrated its efficacy and underscored the robustness of FocalNeXt in different configurations. The results underline its potential to contribute to advances in medical imaging and personalized healthcare.

Improving the endoscopic recognition of early colorectal carcinoma using artificial intelligence: current evidence and future directions.

Background and study aims Artificial intelligence (AI) has great potential to improve endoscopic recognition of early stage colorectal carcinoma (CRC). This scoping review aimed to summarize current evidence on this topic, provide an overview of the methodologies currently used, and guide future research. Methods A systematic search was performed following the PRISMA-Scr guideline. PubMed (including Medline), Scopus, Embase, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library were searched up to January 2024. Studies were eligible for inclusion when using AI for distinguishing CRC from colorectal polyps on endoscopic imaging, using histopathology as gold standard, reporting sensitivity, specificity, or accuracy as outcomes. Results Of 5024 screened articles, 26 were included. Computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) system classification categories ranged from two categories, such as lesions suitable or unsuitable for endoscopic resection, to five categories, such as hyperplastic polyp, sessile serrated lesion, adenoma, cancer, and other. The number of images used in testing databases varied from 69 to 84,585. Diagnostic performances were divergent, with sensitivities varying from 55.0% to 99.2%, specificities from 67.5% to 100% and accuracies from 74.4% to 94.4%. Conclusions This review highlights that using AI to improve endoscopic recognition of early stage CRC is an upcoming research field. We introduced a suggestions list of essential subjects to report in research regarding the development of endoscopy CADx systems, aiming to facilitate more complete reporting and better comparability between studies. There is a knowledge gap regarding real-time CADx system performance during multicenter external validation. Future research should focus on development of CADx systems that can differentiate CRC from premalignant lesions, while providing an indication of invasion depth.