Multimodal Medical Image Research Articles

The role of multimodal medical imaging in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of myocarditis

The role of multimodal medical imaging in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of myocarditis

Feature extraction of multimodal medical image fusion using novel deep learning and contrast enhancement method

Feature extraction of multimodal medical image fusion using novel deep learning and contrast enhancement method

LRFNet: A real-time medical image fusion method guided by detail information

Multimodal medical image fusion (MMIF) technology plays a crucial role in medical diagnosis and treatment by integrating different images to obtain fusion images with comprehensive information. Deep learning-based fusion methods have demonstrated superior performance, but some of them still encounter challenges such as imbalanced retention of color and texture information and low fusion efficiency. To alleviate the above issues, this paper presents a real-time MMIF method, called a lightweight residual fusion network. First, a feature extraction framework with three branches is designed. Two independent branches are used to fully extract brightness and texture information. The fusion branch enables different modal information to be interactively fused at a shallow level, thereby better retaining brightness and texture information. Furthermore, a lightweight residual unit is designed to replace the conventional residual convolution in the model, thereby improving the fusion efficiency and reducing the overall model size by approximately 5 times. Finally, considering that the high-frequency image decomposed by the wavelet transform contains abundant edge and texture information, an adaptive strategy is proposed for assigning weights to the loss function based on the information content in the high-frequency image. This strategy effectively guides the model toward preserving intricate details. The experimental results on MRI and functional images demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits superior fusion performance and efficiency compared to alternative approaches. The code of LRFNet is available at https://github.com/HeDan-11/LRFNet.

Artificial intelligence and multimodal data fusion for smart healthcare: topic modeling and bibliometrics

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have driven extensive research into developing diverse multimodal data analysis approaches for smart healthcare. There is a scarcity of large-scale analysis of literature in this field based on quantitative approaches. This study performed a bibliometric and topic modeling examination on 683 articles from 2002 to 2022, focusing on research topics and trends, journals, countries/regions, institutions, authors, and scientific collaborations. Results showed that, firstly, the number of articles has grown from 1 in 2002 to 220 in 2022, with a majority being published in interdisciplinary journals that link healthcare and medical research and information technology and AI. Secondly, the significant rise in the quantity of research articles can be attributed to the increasing contribution of scholars from non-English speaking countries/regions and the noteworthy contributions made by authors in the USA and India. Thirdly, researchers show a high interest in diverse research issues, especially, cross-modality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for brain tumor analysis, cancer prognosis through multi-dimensional data analysis, and AI-assisted diagnostics and personalization in healthcare, with each topic experiencing a significant increase in research interest. There is an emerging trend towards issues such as applying generative adversarial networks and contrastive learning for multimodal medical image fusion and synthesis and utilizing the combined spatiotemporal resolution of functional MRI and electroencephalogram in a data-centric manner. This study is valuable in enhancing researchers’ and practitioners’ understanding of the present focal points and upcoming trajectories in AI-powered smart healthcare based on multimodal data analysis.

Quaternion Cross-Modality Spatial Learning for Multi-Modal Medical Image Segmentation.

Recently, the Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have had a large impact on imaging process including medical image segmentation, and the real-valued convolution of DNN has been extensively utilized in multi-modal medical image segmentation to accurately segment lesions via learning data information. However, the weighted summation operation in such convolution limits the ability to maintain spatial dependence that is crucial for identifying different lesion distributions. In this paper, we propose a novel Quaternion Cross-modality Spatial Learning (Q-CSL) which explores the spatial information while considering the linkage between multi-modal images. Specifically, we introduce to quaternion to represent data and coordinates that contain spatial information. Additionally, we propose Quaternion Spatial-association Convolution to learn the spatial information. Subsequently, the proposed De-level Quaternion Cross-modality Fusion (De-QCF) module excavates inner space features and fuses cross-modality spatial dependency. Our experimental results demonstrate that our approach compared to the competitive methods perform well with only 0.01061 M parameters and 9.95G FLOPs.

Brain MRI and CT Image Fusion Using Multiscale Local Extrema and Image Statistics

In medical applications such as radiotherapy and guided-image surgery, data fusion for diagnostic imaging has emerged as a critical issue. Because the objective of medical image fusion is to improve patient diagnosis accuracy, the fused image is created by preserving the source images' prominent details and features. It has been demonstrated that the Multi-Level Local Extrema representation has numerous advantages over traditional image modeling approaches. We propose an innovative MLE-based fusion method for multimodal medical images in this paper. In the MLE schema, the proposed algorithm decomposes source images into coarse and detailed layers, then fuses the source images using weights calculated from these detail images using image statistics. We visually and quantitatively compared the efficacy of the suggested approach to that of existing methods using five different types of medical images from various sources. The experimental results showed that the proposed scheme outperforms other current typical schemes in terms of both qualitative image quality and objective evaluation.

A Novel Hybrid Multimodal Medical Image Fusion Scheme Based on Non-subsampled Shearlet Transform

A Novel Hybrid Multimodal Medical Image Fusion Scheme Based on Non-subsampled Shearlet Transform

Adaptive convolutional sparsity with sub-band correlation in the NSCT domain for MRI image fusion

Objective. Multimodal medical image fusion (MMIF) technologies merges diverse medical images with rich information, boosting diagnostic efficiency and accuracy. Due to global optimization and single-valued nature, convolutional sparse representation (CSR) outshines the standard sparse representation (SR) in significance. By addressing the challenges of sensitivity to highly redundant dictionaries and robustness to misregistration, an adaptive convolutional sparsity scheme with measurement of the sub-band correlation in the non-subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) domain is proposed for MMIF. Approach. The fusion scheme incorporates four main components: image decomposition into two scales, fusion of detail layers, fusion of base layers, and reconstruction of the two scales. We solved a Tikhonov regularization optimization problem with source images to obtain the base and detail layers. Then, after CSR processing, detail layers were sparsely decomposed using pre-trained dictionary filters for initial coefficient maps. NSCT domain’s sub-band correlation was used to refine fusion coefficient maps, and sparse reconstruction produced the fused detail layer. Meanwhile, base layers were fused using averaging. The final fused image was obtained via two-scale reconstruction. Main results. Experimental validation of clinical image sets revealed that the proposed fusion scheme can not only effectively eliminate the interference of partial misregistration, but also outperform the representative state-of-the-art fusion schemes in the preservation of structural and textural details according to subjective visual evaluations and objective quality evaluations. Significance. The proposed fusion scheme is competitive due to its low-redundancy dictionary, robustness to misregistration, and better fusion performance. This is achieved by training the dictionary with minimal samples through CSR to adaptively preserve overcompleteness for detail layers, and constructing fusion activity level with sub-band correlation in the NSCT domain to maintain CSR attributes. Additionally, ordering the NSCT for reverse sparse representation further enhances sub-band correlation to promote the preservation of structural and textural details.

An integration of meta-heuristic approach utilizing kernel principal component analysis for multimodal medical image registration

An integration of meta-heuristic approach utilizing kernel principal component analysis for multimodal medical image registration

Research on automatic generation of multimodal medical image reports based on memory driven

The task of automatic generation of medical image reports faces various challenges, such as diverse types of diseases and a lack of professionalism and fluency in report descriptions. To address these issues, this paper proposes a multimodal medical imaging report based on memory drive method (mMIRmd). Firstly, a hierarchical vision transformer using shifted windows (Swin-Transformer) is utilized to extract multi-perspective visual features of patient medical images, and semantic features of textual medical history information are extracted using bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT). Subsequently, the visual and semantic features are integrated to enhance the model's ability to recognize different disease types. Furthermore, a medical text pre-trained word vector dictionary is employed to encode labels of visual features, thereby enhancing the professionalism of the generated reports. Finally, a memory driven module is introduced in the decoder, addressing long-distance dependencies in medical image data. This study is validated on the chest X-ray dataset collected at Indiana University (IU X-Ray) and the medical information mart for intensive care chest x-ray (MIMIC-CXR) released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method can better focus on the affected areas, improve the accuracy and fluency of report generation, and assist radiologists in quickly completing medical image report writing.

Multimodal Biomedical Image Segmentation using Multi-Dimensional U-Convolutional Neural Network

Deep learning recently achieved advancement in the segmentation of medical images. In this regard, U-Net is the most predominant deep neural network, and its architecture is the most prevalent in the medical imaging society. Experiments conducted on difficult datasets directed us to the conclusion that the traditional U-Net framework appears to be deficient in certain respects, despite its overall excellence in segmenting multimodal medical images. Therefore, we propose several modifications to the existing cutting-edge U-Net model. The technical approach involves applying a Multi-Dimensional U-Convolutional Neural Network to achieve accurate segmentation of multimodal biomedical images, enhancing precision and comprehensiveness in identifying and analyzing structures across diverse imaging modalities. As a result of the enhancements, we propose a novel framework called Multi-Dimensional U-Convolutional Neural Network (MDU-CNN) as a potential successor to the U-Net framework. On a large set of multimodal medical images, we compared our proposed framework, MDU-CNN, to the classical U-Net. There have been small changes in the case of perfect images, and a huge improvement is obtained in the case of difficult images. We tested our model on five distinct datasets, each of which presented unique challenges, and found that it has obtained a better performance of 1.32%, 5.19%, 4.50%, 10.23% and 0.87%, respectively.

Medical image fusion based on machine learning for health diagnosis and monitoring of colorectal cancer

With the rapid development of medical imaging technology and computer technology, the medical imaging artificial intelligence of computer-aided diagnosis based on machine learning has become an important part of modern medical diagnosis. With the application of medical image security technology, people realize that the difficulty of its development is the inherent defect of advanced image processing technology. This paper introduces the background of colorectal cancer diagnosis and monitoring, and then carries out academic research on the medical imaging artificial intelligence of colorectal cancer diagnosis and monitoring and machine learning, and finally summarizes it with the advanced computational intelligence system for the application of safe medical imaging.In the experimental part, this paper wants to carry out the staging preparation stage. It was concluded that the staging preparation stage of group Y was higher than that of group X and the difference was statistically significant. Then the overall accuracy rate of multimodal medical image fusion was 69.5% through pathological staging comparison. Finally, the diagnostic rate, the number of patients with effective treatment and satisfaction were analyzed. Finally, the average diagnostic rate of the new diagnosis method was 8.75% higher than that of the traditional diagnosis method. With the development of computer science and technology, the application field was expanding constantly. Computer aided diagnosis technology combining computer and medical images has become a research hotspot.

Multimodal diagnosis model of Alzheimer’s disease based on improved Transformer

PurposeRecent technological advancements in data acquisition tools allowed neuroscientists to acquire different modality data to diagnosis Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, how to fuse these enormous amount different modality data to improve recognizing rate and find significance brain regions is still challenging.MethodsThe algorithm used multimodal medical images [structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET)] as experimental data. Deep feature representations of sMRI and PET images are extracted by 3D convolution neural network (3DCNN). An improved Transformer is then used to progressively learn global correlation information among features. Finally, the information from different modalities is fused for identification. A model-based visualization method is used to explain the decisions of the model and identify brain regions related to AD.ResultsThe model attained a noteworthy classification accuracy of 98.1% for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) using the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset. Upon examining the visualization results, distinct brain regions associated with AD diagnosis were observed across different image modalities. Notably, the left parahippocampal region emerged consistently as a prominent and significant brain area.ConclusionsA large number of comparative experiments have been carried out for the model, and the experimental results verify the reliability of the model. In addition, the model adopts a visualization analysis method based on the characteristics of the model, which improves the interpretability of the model. Some disease-related brain regions were found in the visualization results, which provides reliable information for AD clinical research.

Multiple Pseudo-Siamese Network with Supervised Contrast Learning for Medical Multi-modal Retrieval

Medical multi-modal retrieval aims to provide doctors with similar medical images from different modalities, which can greatly promote the efficiency and accuracy of clinical diagnosis. However, most existing medical retrieval methods hardly support the retrieval of multi-modal medical images, i.e., the number of modalities is greater than 2, and just convert retrieval to classification or clustering. It futilely breaks the gap between the visual information and the semantic information in different medical image modalities. To solve the problem, a S upervised C ontrast L earning method based on a M ultiple P seudo- S iamese network (SCL-MPS) is proposed for multi-modal medical image retrieval. In order to make the samples with semantic similarity close neighbors on Riemann manifold, the multiple constraints based on semantic consistency and modal invariance are designed in different forward stages of SCL-MPS. We theoretically demonstrate the feasibility of the designed constraints. Finally, experiments on four benchmark datasets (ADNI1, ADNI2, ADNI3, and OASIS3) show that SCL-MPS achieves state-of-the-art performance compared to 15 retrieval methods. Especially, SCL-MPS achieves a 100% mAP score in medical cross-modal retrieval on ADNI1.

L2NLF: a novel linear-to-nonlinear framework for multi-modal medical image registration.

In recent years, deep learning has ushered in significant development in medical image registration, and the method of non-rigid registration using deep neural networks to generate a deformation field has higher accuracy. However, unlike monomodal medical image registration, multimodal medical image registration is a more complex and challenging task. This paper proposes a new linear-to-nonlinear framework (L2NLF) for multimodal medical image registration. The first linear stage is essentially image conversion, which can reduce the difference between two images without changing the authenticity of medical images, thus transforming multimodal registration into monomodal registration. The second nonlinear stage is essentially unsupervised deformable registration based on the deep neural network. In this paper, a brand-new registration network, CrossMorph, is designed, a deep neural network similar to the U-net structure. As the backbone of the encoder, the volume CrossFormer block can better extract local and global information. Booster promotes the reduction of more deep features and shallow features. The qualitative and quantitative experimental results on T1 and T2 data of 240 patients' brains show that L2NLF can achieve excellent registration effect in the image conversion part with very low computation, and it will not change the authenticity of the converted image at all. Compared with the current state-of-the-art registration method, CrossMorph can effectively reduce average surface distance, improve dice score, and improve the deformation field's smoothness. The proposed methods have potential value in clinical application.

Multi-ConDoS: Multimodal Contrastive Domain Sharing Generative Adversarial Networks for Self-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation.

Existing self-supervised medical image segmentation usually encounters the domain shift problem (i.e., the input distribution of pre-training is different from that of fine-tuning) and/or the multimodality problem (i.e., it is based on single-modal data only and cannot utilize the fruitful multimodal information of medical images). To solve these problems, in this work, we propose multimodal contrastive domain sharing (Multi-ConDoS) generative adversarial networks to achieve effective multimodal contrastive self-supervised medical image segmentation. Compared to the existing self-supervised approaches, Multi-ConDoS has the following three advantages: (i) it utilizes multimodal medical images to learn more comprehensive object features via multimodal contrastive learning; (ii) domain translation is achieved by integrating the cyclic learning strategy of CycleGAN and the cross-domain translation loss of Pix2Pix; (iii) novel domain sharing layers are introduced to learn not only domain-specific but also domain-sharing information from the multimodal medical images. Extensive experiments on two publicly multimodal medical image segmentation datasets show that, with only 5% (resp., 10%) of labeled data, Multi-ConDoS not only greatly outperforms the state-of-the-art self-supervised and semi-supervised medical image segmentation baselines with the same ratio of labeled data, but also achieves similar (sometimes even better) performances as fully supervised segmentation methods with 50% (resp., 100%) of labeled data, which thus proves that our work can achieve superior segmentation performances with very low labeling workload. Furthermore, ablation studies prove that the above three improvements are all effective and essential for Multi-ConDoS to achieve this very superior performance.

Multimodal medical image fusion method based on structural functional cross neural network

Multimodal medical image fusion method based on structural functional cross neural network

Autoencoder and CNN for Content-based Retrieval of Multimodal Medical Images

Autoencoder and CNN for Content-based Retrieval of Multimodal Medical Images

A combined approach of radon and Fourier transform for multimodal medical image registration

A combined approach of radon and Fourier transform for multimodal medical image registration

An Open-Source Software Approach to Multimodal Medical Imaging: Combination of Anatomical and Thermal 3D Models

As the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction and visualisation of medical imaging systems, such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), become common approaches for assisting physicians with a visual representation of anatomy structures, a novelty approach adding functional elements of the human body started being explored. So, medical thermography has been used as a complementary imaging technique for diagnosis and monitoring of pathologies, based on the identification of surface temperature changes. Therefore, this paper presents a new open-source software approach to multimodal medical imaging. The proposed methodology involves the 3D reconstruction of an anatomical model and thermal model, being the latter based on a Structure from Motion (SfM) approach, and the combination of both models, providing a complete 3D multimodal model that contains inner information regarding the anatomy of the body, and outer physiological information. It showed efficient results regarding the visualisation of the multimodal model in a single coordinate system in different views (axial, coronal, and sagittal), allowing it to be inspected by physicians, whilst improving pathology assessment. The 3D multimodal models have potential to be expanded to medical applications, such as diagnosis, surgery, and follow-up care, whilst being cost effective by resorting to available open-source software.