266 research outputs found
Reasoning with Uncertainty in Deep Learning for Safer Medical Image Computing
Deep learning is now ubiquitous in the research field of medical image computing. As such technologies progress towards clinical translation, the question of safety becomes critical. Once deployed, machine learning systems unavoidably face situations where the correct decision or prediction is ambiguous. However, the current methods disproportionately rely on deterministic algorithms, lacking a mechanism to represent and manipulate uncertainty. In safety-critical applications such as medical imaging, reasoning under uncertainty is crucial for developing a reliable decision making system. Probabilistic machine learning provides a natural framework to quantify the degree of uncertainty over different variables of interest, be it the prediction, the model parameters and structures, or the underlying data (images and labels). Probability distributions are used to represent all the uncertain unobserved quantities in a model and how they relate to the data, and probability theory is used as a language to compute and manipulate these distributions. In this thesis, we explore probabilistic modelling as a framework to integrate uncertainty information into deep learning models, and demonstrate its utility in various high-dimensional medical imaging applications. In the process, we make several fundamental enhancements to current methods. We categorise our contributions into three groups according to the types of uncertainties being modelled: (i) predictive; (ii) structural and (iii) human uncertainty. Firstly, we discuss the importance of quantifying predictive uncertainty and understanding its sources for developing a risk-averse and transparent medical image enhancement application. We demonstrate how a measure of predictive uncertainty can be used as a proxy for the predictive accuracy in the absence of ground-truths. Furthermore, assuming the structure of the model is flexible enough for the task, we introduce a way to decompose the predictive uncertainty into its orthogonal sources i.e. aleatoric and parameter uncertainty. We show the potential utility of such decoupling in providing a quantitative “explanations” into the model performance. Secondly, we introduce our recent attempts at learning model structures directly from data. One work proposes a method based on variational inference to learn a posterior distribution over connectivity structures within a neural network architecture for multi-task learning, and share some preliminary results in the MR-only radiotherapy planning application. Another work explores how the training algorithm of decision trees could be extended to grow the architecture of a neural network to adapt to the given availability of data and the complexity of the task. Lastly, we develop methods to model the “measurement noise” (e.g., biases and skill levels) of human annotators, and integrate this information into the learning process of the neural network classifier. In particular, we show that explicitly modelling the uncertainty involved in the annotation process not only leads to an improvement in robustness to label noise, but also yields useful insights into the patterns of errors that characterise individual experts
Multi-branch Convolutional Neural Network for Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation
In this paper, we present an automated approach for segmenting multiple
sclerosis (MS) lesions from multi-modal brain magnetic resonance images. Our
method is based on a deep end-to-end 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) for
slice-based segmentation of 3D volumetric data. The proposed CNN includes a
multi-branch downsampling path, which enables the network to encode information
from multiple modalities separately. Multi-scale feature fusion blocks are
proposed to combine feature maps from different modalities at different stages
of the network. Then, multi-scale feature upsampling blocks are introduced to
upsize combined feature maps to leverage information from lesion shape and
location. We trained and tested the proposed model using orthogonal plane
orientations of each 3D modality to exploit the contextual information in all
directions. The proposed pipeline is evaluated on two different datasets: a
private dataset including 37 MS patients and a publicly available dataset known
as the ISBI 2015 longitudinal MS lesion segmentation challenge dataset,
consisting of 14 MS patients. Considering the ISBI challenge, at the time of
submission, our method was amongst the top performing solutions. On the private
dataset, using the same array of performance metrics as in the ISBI challenge,
the proposed approach shows high improvements in MS lesion segmentation
compared with other publicly available tools.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in NeuroImag
Fast and Sequence-Adaptive Whole-Brain Segmentation Using Parametric Bayesian Modeling
AbstractQuantitative analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain requires accurate automated segmentation of anatomical structures. A desirable feature for such segmentation methods is to be robust against changes in acquisition platform and imaging protocol. In this paper we validate the performance of a segmentation algorithm designed to meet these requirements, building upon generative parametric models previously used in tissue classification. The method is tested on four different datasets acquired with different scanners, field strengths and pulse sequences, demonstrating comparable accuracy to state-of-the-art methods on T1-weighted scans while being one to two orders of magnitude faster. The proposed algorithm is also shown to be robust against small training datasets, and readily handles images with different MRI contrast as well as multi-contrast data
A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis
Deep learning algorithms, in particular convolutional networks, have rapidly
become a methodology of choice for analyzing medical images. This paper reviews
the major deep learning concepts pertinent to medical image analysis and
summarizes over 300 contributions to the field, most of which appeared in the
last year. We survey the use of deep learning for image classification, object
detection, segmentation, registration, and other tasks and provide concise
overviews of studies per application area. Open challenges and directions for
future research are discussed.Comment: Revised survey includes expanded discussion section and reworked
introductory section on common deep architectures. Added missed papers from
before Feb 1st 201
Exploring variability in medical imaging
Although recent successes of deep learning and novel machine learning techniques improved the perfor-
mance of classification and (anomaly) detection in computer vision problems, the application of these
methods in medical imaging pipeline remains a very challenging task. One of the main reasons for this
is the amount of variability that is encountered and encapsulated in human anatomy and subsequently
reflected in medical images. This fundamental factor impacts most stages in modern medical imaging
processing pipelines.
Variability of human anatomy makes it virtually impossible to build large datasets for each disease
with labels and annotation for fully supervised machine learning. An efficient way to cope with this is
to try and learn only from normal samples. Such data is much easier to collect. A case study of such
an automatic anomaly detection system based on normative learning is presented in this work. We
present a framework for detecting fetal cardiac anomalies during ultrasound screening using generative
models, which are trained only utilising normal/healthy subjects.
However, despite the significant improvement in automatic abnormality detection systems, clinical
routine continues to rely exclusively on the contribution of overburdened medical experts to diagnosis
and localise abnormalities. Integrating human expert knowledge into the medical imaging processing
pipeline entails uncertainty which is mainly correlated with inter-observer variability. From the per-
spective of building an automated medical imaging system, it is still an open issue, to what extent
this kind of variability and the resulting uncertainty are introduced during the training of a model
and how it affects the final performance of the task. Consequently, it is very important to explore the
effect of inter-observer variability both, on the reliable estimation of model’s uncertainty, as well as
on the model’s performance in a specific machine learning task. A thorough investigation of this issue
is presented in this work by leveraging automated estimates for machine learning model uncertainty,
inter-observer variability and segmentation task performance in lung CT scan images.
Finally, a presentation of an overview of the existing anomaly detection methods in medical imaging
was attempted. This state-of-the-art survey includes both conventional pattern recognition methods
and deep learning based methods. It is one of the first literature surveys attempted in the specific
research area.Open Acces
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