PDL: Regularizing Multiple Instance Learning with Progressive Dropout Layers

Multiple instance learning (MIL) was a weakly supervised learning approach that sought to assign binary class labels to collections of instances known as bags. However, due to their weak supervision nature, the MIL methods were susceptible to overfitting and required assistance in developing comprehensive representations of target instances. While regularization typically effectively combated overfitting, its integration with the MIL model has been frequently overlooked in prior studies. Meanwhile, current regularization methods for MIL have shown limitations in their capacity to uncover a diverse array of representations. In this study, we delve into the realm of regularization within the MIL model, presenting a novel approach in the form of a Progressive Dropout Layer (PDL). We aim to not only address overfitting but also empower the MIL model in uncovering intricate and impactful feature representations. The proposed method was orthogonal to existing MIL methods and could be easily integrated into them to boost performance. Our extensive evaluation across a range of MIL benchmark datasets demonstrated that the incorporation of the PDL into multiple MIL methods not only elevated their classification performance but also augmented their potential for weakly-supervised feature localizations.Comment: The code is available in https://github.com/ChongQingNoSubway/PD

NNMobile-Net: Rethinking CNN Design for Deep Learning-Based Retinopathy Research

Retinal diseases (RD) are the leading cause of severe vision loss or blindness. Deep learning-based automated tools play an indispensable role in assisting clinicians in diagnosing and monitoring RD in modern medicine. Recently, an increasing number of works in this field have taken advantage of Vision Transformer to achieve state-of-the-art performance with more parameters and higher model complexity compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Such sophisticated and task-specific model designs, however, are prone to be overfitting and hinder their generalizability. In this work, we argue that a channel-aware and well-calibrated CNN model may overcome these problems. To this end, we empirically studied CNN's macro and micro designs and its training strategies. Based on the investigation, we proposed a no-new-MobleNet (nn-MobileNet) developed for retinal diseases. In our experiments, our generic, simple and efficient model superseded most current state-of-the-art methods on four public datasets for multiple tasks, including diabetic retinopathy grading, fundus multi-disease detection, and diabetic macular edema classification. Our work may provide novel insights into deep learning architecture design and advance retinopathy research.Comment: Code will publish soon: https://github.com/Retinal-Research/NNMOBILE-NE

OTRE: Where Optimal Transport Guided Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation Meets Regularization by Enhancing

Non-mydriatic retinal color fundus photography (CFP) is widely available due to the advantage of not requiring pupillary dilation, however, is prone to poor quality due to operators, systemic imperfections, or patient-related causes. Optimal retinal image quality is mandated for accurate medical diagnoses and automated analyses. Herein, we leveraged the Optimal Transport (OT) theory to propose an unpaired image-to-image translation scheme for mapping low-quality retinal CFPs to high-quality counterparts. Furthermore, to improve the flexibility, robustness, and applicability of our image enhancement pipeline in the clinical practice, we generalized a state-of-the-art model-based image reconstruction method, regularization by denoising, by plugging in priors learned by our OT-guided image-to-image translation network. We named it as regularization by enhancing (RE). We validated the integrated framework, OTRE, on three publicly available retinal image datasets by assessing the quality after enhancement and their performance on various downstream tasks, including diabetic retinopathy grading, vessel segmentation, and diabetic lesion segmentation. The experimental results demonstrated the superiority of our proposed framework over some state-of-the-art unsupervised competitors and a state-of-the-art supervised method.Comment: Accepted as a conference paper to The 28th biennial international conference on Information Processing in Medical Imaging (IPMI 2023

Prediction of intracranial hemorrhagic events based on retinal microvascular abnormalities: a meta-analysis

Retinal microvascular abnormalities have been shown to be associated with intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in several studies. The standardization of the retinal findings and the degree of the association remain unclear. Objective: To synthesize estimates of risk across cohort studies and to quantify the association of retinal microvascular signs with incident intracranial bleeding events

Understanding Optic Neuritis from Murine Models of Multiple Sclerosis

The availability of a good animal model is critical for understanding MS and developing therapies to control the disease. The primary experimental MS animal model has been the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model. Another model of viral induced CNS demyelination was recently published, based on ocular infection with a recombinant HSV-1 constitutively expressing murine IL-2 (HSV-IL-2)