4 research outputs found
Stochastic Filter Groups for Multi-Task CNNs: Learning Specialist and Generalist Convolution Kernels
The performance of multi-task learning in Convolutional Neural Networks
(CNNs) hinges on the design of feature sharing between tasks within the
architecture. The number of possible sharing patterns are combinatorial in the
depth of the network and the number of tasks, and thus hand-crafting an
architecture, purely based on the human intuitions of task relationships can be
time-consuming and suboptimal. In this paper, we present a probabilistic
approach to learning task-specific and shared representations in CNNs for
multi-task learning. Specifically, we propose "stochastic filter groups''
(SFG), a mechanism to assign convolution kernels in each layer to "specialist''
or "generalist'' groups, which are specific to or shared across different
tasks, respectively. The SFG modules determine the connectivity between layers
and the structures of task-specific and shared representations in the network.
We employ variational inference to learn the posterior distribution over the
possible grouping of kernels and network parameters. Experiments demonstrate
that the proposed method generalises across multiple tasks and shows improved
performance over baseline methods.Comment: Accepted for oral presentation at ICCV 201
Uncertainty in multitask learning: joint representations for probabilistic MR-only radiotherapy planning
Multi-task neural network architectures provide a mechanism that jointly
integrates information from distinct sources. It is ideal in the context of
MR-only radiotherapy planning as it can jointly regress a synthetic CT (synCT)
scan and segment organs-at-risk (OAR) from MRI. We propose a probabilistic
multi-task network that estimates: 1) intrinsic uncertainty through a
heteroscedastic noise model for spatially-adaptive task loss weighting and 2)
parameter uncertainty through approximate Bayesian inference. This allows
sampling of multiple segmentations and synCTs that share their network
representation. We test our model on prostate cancer scans and show that it
produces more accurate and consistent synCTs with a better estimation in the
variance of the errors, state of the art results in OAR segmentation and a
methodology for quality assurance in radiotherapy treatment planning.Comment: Early-accept at MICCAI 2018, 8 pages, 4 figure
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Disease Progression Modeling in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Rationale: The decades-long progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) renders identifying different trajectories of disease progression challenging.Objectives: To identify subtypes of patients with COPD with distinct longitudinal progression patterns using a novel machine-learning tool called "Subtype and Stage Inference" (SuStaIn) and to evaluate the utility of SuStaIn for patient stratification in COPD.Methods: We applied SuStaIn to cross-sectional computed tomography imaging markers in 3,698 Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) 1-4 patients and 3,479 controls from the COPDGene (COPD Genetic Epidemiology) study to identify subtypes of patients with COPD. We confirmed the identified subtypes and progression patterns using ECLIPSE (Evaluation of COPD Longitudinally to Identify Predictive Surrogate Endpoints) data. We assessed the utility of SuStaIn for patient stratification by comparing SuStaIn subtypes and stages at baseline with longitudinal follow-up data.Measurements and Main Results: We identified two trajectories of disease progression in COPD: a "Tissue→Airway" subtype (n = 2,354, 70.4%), in which small airway dysfunction and emphysema precede large airway wall abnormalities, and an "Airway→Tissue" subtype (n = 988, 29.6%), in which large airway wall abnormalities precede emphysema and small airway dysfunction. Subtypes were reproducible in ECLIPSE. Baseline stage in both subtypes correlated with future FEV1/FVC decline (r = -0.16 [P < 0.001] in the Tissue→Airway group; r = -0.14 [P = 0.011] in the Airway→Tissue group). SuStaIn placed 30% of smokers with normal lung function at elevated stages, suggesting imaging changes consistent with early COPD. Individuals with early changes were 2.5 times more likely to meet COPD diagnostic criteria at follow-up.Conclusions: We demonstrate two distinct patterns of disease progression in COPD using SuStaIn, likely representing different endotypes. One third of healthy smokers have detectable imaging changes, suggesting a new biomarker of "early COPD.