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Bhagawati M, Paul S, Mantella L, Johri AM, Laird JR, Singh IM, Singh R, Garg D, Fouda MM, Khanna NN, Cau R, Abraham A, Al-Maini M, Isenovic ER, Sharma AM, Fernandes JFE, Chaturvedi S, Karla MK, Nicolaides A, Saba L, Suri JS. Deep learning approach for cardiovascular disease risk stratification and survival analysis on a Canadian cohort. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CARDIOVASCULAR IMAGING 2024; 40:1283-1303. [PMID: 38678144 DOI: 10.1007/s10554-024-03100-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2023] [Accepted: 04/02/2024] [Indexed: 04/29/2024]
Abstract
The quantification of carotid plaque has been routinely used to predict cardiovascular risk in cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronary artery disease (CAD). To determine how well carotid plaque features predict the likelihood of CAD and cardiovascular (CV) events using deep learning (DL) and compare against the machine learning (ML) paradigm. The participants in this study consisted of 459 individuals who had undergone coronary angiography, contrast-enhanced ultrasonography, and focused carotid B-mode ultrasound. Each patient was tracked for thirty days. The measurements on these patients consisted of maximum plaque height (MPH), total plaque area (TPA), carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT), and intraplaque neovascularization (IPN). CAD risk and CV event stratification were performed by applying eight types of DL-based models. Univariate and multivariate analysis was also conducted to predict the most significant risk predictors. The DL's model effectiveness was evaluated by the area-under-the-curve measurement while the CV event prediction was evaluated using the Cox proportional hazard model (CPHM) and compared against the DL-based concordance index (c-index). IPN showed a substantial ability to predict CV events (p < 0.0001). The best DL system improved by 21% (0.929 vs. 0.762) over the best ML system. DL-based CV event prediction showed a ~ 17% increase in DL-based c-index compared to the CPHM (0.86 vs. 0.73). CAD and CV incidents were linked to IPN and carotid imaging characteristics. For survival analysis and CAD prediction, the DL-based system performs superior to ML-based models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mrinalini Bhagawati
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India
| | - Sudip Paul
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India
| | - Laura Mantella
- Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
| | - Amer M Johri
- Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
| | - John R Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St Helena, CA, 94574, USA
| | - Inder M Singh
- Stroke Diagnostic and Monitoring Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, 95661, USA
| | - Rajesh Singh
- Division of Research and Innovation, UTI, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun, India
| | - Deepak Garg
- School of Cowereter Science and Artificial Intelligence, SR University, Warangal, Telangana, 506371, India
| | - Mostafa M Fouda
- Department of ECE, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, 83209, USA
| | | | - Riccardo Cau
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria, 40138, Cagliari, Italy
| | | | - Mostafa Al-Maini
- Allergy, Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Esma R Isenovic
- Department of Radiobiology and Molecular Genetics, National Institute of The Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade, 11001, Belgrade, Serbia
| | - Aditya M Sharma
- Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA
| | | | - Seemant Chaturvedi
- Department of Neurology & Stroke Program, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Mannudeep K Karla
- Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre, University of Nicosia Medical School, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria, 40138, Cagliari, Italy
| | - Jasjit S Suri
- Stroke Diagnostic and Monitoring Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, 95661, USA.
- Department of ECE, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, 83209, USA.
- Department of CE, Graphic Era Deemed to be University, 248002, Dehradun, India.
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Ding J, Zhou R, Fang X, Wang F, Wang J, Gan H, Fenster A. An image registration-based self-supervised Su-Net for carotid plaque ultrasound image segmentation. COMPUTER METHODS AND PROGRAMS IN BIOMEDICINE 2024; 244:107957. [PMID: 38061113 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107957] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2022] [Revised: 11/17/2023] [Accepted: 11/27/2023] [Indexed: 01/26/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Total Plaque Area (TPA) measurement is critical for early diagnosis and intervention of carotid atherosclerosis in individuals with high risk for stroke. The delineation of the carotid plaques is necessary for TPA measurement, and deep learning methods can automatically segment the plaque and measure TPA from carotid ultrasound images. A large number of labeled images is essential for training a good deep learning model, but it is very difficult to collect such large labeled datasets for carotid image segmentation in clinical practice. Self-supervised learning can provide a possible solution to improve the deep-learning models on small labeled training datasets by designing a pretext task to pre-train the models without using the segmentation masks. However, the existing self-supervised learning methods do not consider the feature presentations of object contours. METHODS In this paper, we propose an image registration-based self-supervised learning method and a stacked U-Net (SSL-SU-Net) for carotid plaque ultrasound image segmentation, which can better exploit the semantic features of carotid plaque contours in self-supervised task training. RESULTS Our network was trained on different numbers of labeled images (n = 10, 33, 50 and 100 subjects) and tested on 44 subjects from the SPARC dataset (n = 144, London, Canada). The network trained on the entire SPARC dataset was then directly applied to an independent dataset collected in Zhongnan hospital (n = 497, Wuhan, China). For the 44 subjects tested on the SPARC dataset, our method yielded a DSC of 80.25-89.18% and the produced TPA measurements, which were strongly correlated with manual segmentation (r = 0.965-0.995, ρ< 0.0001). For the Zhongnan dataset, the DSC was 90.3% and algorithm TPAs were strongly correlated with manual TPAs (r = 0.985, ρ< 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS The results demonstrate that our proposed method yielded excellent performance and good generalization ability when trained on a small labeled dataset, facilitating the use of deep learning in carotid ultrasound image analysis and clinical practice. The code of our algorithm is available https://github.com/a610lab/Registration-SSL.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jing Ding
- School of Computer Science, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China
| | - Ran Zhou
- School of Computer Science, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China.
| | - Xiaoyue Fang
- School of Computer Science, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China
| | - Furong Wang
- Liyuan Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China
| | - Ji Wang
- School of Computer Science, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China
| | - Haitao Gan
- School of Computer Science, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430068, China.
| | - Aaron Fenster
- Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, Western University, London N6A 5K8, Ontario, Canada
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Ottakath N, Al-Maadeed S, Zughaier SM, Elharrouss O, Mohammed HH, Chowdhury MEH, Bouridane A. Ultrasound-Based Image Analysis for Predicting Carotid Artery Stenosis Risk: A Comprehensive Review of the Problem, Techniques, Datasets, and Future Directions. Diagnostics (Basel) 2023; 13:2614. [PMID: 37568976 PMCID: PMC10417708 DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics13152614] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2023] [Revised: 07/25/2023] [Accepted: 07/25/2023] [Indexed: 08/13/2023] Open
Abstract
The carotid artery is a major blood vessel that supplies blood to the brain. Plaque buildup in the arteries can lead to cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, stroke, ruptured arteries, and even death. Both invasive and non-invasive methods are used to detect plaque buildup in the arteries, with ultrasound imaging being the first line of diagnosis. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the existing literature on ultrasound image analysis methods for detecting and characterizing plaque buildup in the carotid artery. The review includes an in-depth analysis of datasets; image segmentation techniques for the carotid artery plaque area, lumen area, and intima-media thickness (IMT); and plaque measurement, characterization, classification, and stenosis grading using deep learning and machine learning. Additionally, the paper provides an overview of the performance of these methods, including challenges in analysis, and future directions for research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Najmath Ottakath
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar; (S.A.-M.); (O.E.); (H.H.M.)
| | - Somaya Al-Maadeed
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar; (S.A.-M.); (O.E.); (H.H.M.)
| | | | - Omar Elharrouss
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar; (S.A.-M.); (O.E.); (H.H.M.)
| | - Hanadi Hassen Mohammed
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar; (S.A.-M.); (O.E.); (H.H.M.)
| | | | - Ahmed Bouridane
- Centre for Data Analytics and Cybersecurity, University of Sharjah, Sharjah 27272, United Arab Emirates;
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Zhou GQ, Wei H, Wang X, Wang KN, Chen Y, Xiong F, Ren G, Liu C, Li L, Huang Q. BSMNet: Boundary-salience multi-branch network for intima-media identification in carotid ultrasound images. Comput Biol Med 2023; 162:107092. [PMID: 37263149 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2022] [Revised: 05/05/2023] [Accepted: 05/27/2023] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
Carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) is an essential factor in signaling the risk of cardiovascular diseases, which is commonly evaluated using ultrasound imaging. However, automatic intima-media segmentation and thickness measurement are still challenging due to the boundary ambiguity of intima-media and inherent speckle noises in ultrasound images. In this work, we propose an end-to-end boundary-salience multi-branch network, BSMNet, to tackle the carotid intima-media identification from ultrasound images, where the prior shape knowledge and anatomical dependence are exploited using a parallel linear structure learning modules followed by a boundary refinement module. Moreover, we design a strip attention model to boost the thin strip region segmentation with shape priors, in which an anisotropic kernel shape captures long-range global relations and scrutinizes meaningful local salient contexts simultaneously. Extensive experimental results on an in-house carotid ultrasound (US) dataset demonstrate the promising performance of our method, which achieves about 0.02 improvement in Dice and HD95 than other state-of-the-art methods. Our method is promising in advancing the analysis of systemic arterial disease with ultrasound imaging.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guang-Quan Zhou
- The School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China; Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Biomaterials and Devices, Southeast University, Nanjing, China; State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
| | - Hao Wei
- The School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Xiaoyi Wang
- Shenzhen Delica Medical Equipment Co., Ltd, Shenzhen, 518132, China.
| | - Kai-Ni Wang
- The School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China; Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Biomaterials and Devices, Southeast University, Nanjing, China; State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Yuzhao Chen
- The School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Fei Xiong
- Ethics Committee of Medical and Experimental Animals, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Guanqing Ren
- Shenzhen Delica Medical Equipment Co., Ltd, Shenzhen, 518132, China
| | - Chunying Liu
- Ethics Committee of Medical and Experimental Animals, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China
| | - Le Li
- Institute of Medical Research, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
| | - Qinghua Huang
- School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
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Huang Q, Zhao L, Ren G, Wang X, Liu C, Wang W. NAG-Net: Nested attention-guided learning for segmentation of carotid lumen-intima interface and media-adventitia interface. Comput Biol Med 2023; 156:106718. [PMID: 36889027 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.106718] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2023] [Revised: 02/09/2023] [Accepted: 02/26/2023] [Indexed: 03/06/2023]
Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), as the leading cause of death in the world, poses a serious threat to human health. The segmentation of carotid Lumen-intima interface (LII) and Media-adventitia interface (MAI) is a prerequisite for measuring intima-media thickness (IMT), which is of great significance for early screening and prevention of CVD. Despite recent advances, existing methods still fail to incorporate task-related clinical domain knowledge and require complex post-processing steps to obtain fine contours of LII and MAI. In this paper, a nested attention-guided deep learning model (named NAG-Net) is proposed for accurate segmentation of LII and MAI. The NAG-Net consists of two nested sub-networks, the Intima-Media Region Segmentation Network (IMRSN) and the LII and MAI Segmentation Network (LII-MAISN). It innovatively incorporates task-related clinical domain knowledge through the visual attention map generated by IMRSN, enabling LII-MAISN to focus more on the clinician's visual focus region under the same task during segmentation. Moreover, the segmentation results can directly obtain fine contours of LII and MAI through simple refinement without complicated post-processing steps. To further improve the feature extraction ability of the model and reduce the impact of data scarcity, the strategy of transfer learning is also adopted to apply the pretrained weights of VGG-16. In addition, a channel attention-based encoder feature fusion block (EFFB-ATT) is specially designed to achieve efficient representation of useful features extracted by two parallel encoders in LII-MAISN. Extensive experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed NAG-Net outperformed other state-of-the-art methods and achieved the highest performance on all evaluation metrics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qinghua Huang
- School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, Shaanxi, China; School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, Shaanxi, China.
| | - Liangrun Zhao
- School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, Shaanxi, China; School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, Shaanxi, China.
| | - Guanqing Ren
- Shenzhen Delica Medical Equipment Co., Ltd, Shenzhen, 518132, Guangdong, China.
| | - Xiaoyi Wang
- Shenzhen Delica Medical Equipment Co., Ltd, Shenzhen, 518132, Guangdong, China.
| | - Chunying Liu
- Hospital of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, Shaanxi, China.
| | - Wei Wang
- Sun Yat-sen University First Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou, 510080, Guangdong, China.
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Genkel V, Kuznetsova A, Lebedev E, Salashenko A, Savochkina A, Nikushkina K, Pykhova L, Sumerkina V, Shaposhnik I. Carotid total plaque area as an independent predictor of short-term subclinical polyvascular atherosclerosis progression and major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events. Ther Adv Cardiovasc Dis 2023; 17:17539447231194861. [PMID: 37655749 PMCID: PMC10475231 DOI: 10.1177/17539447231194861] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2023] [Accepted: 07/28/2023] [Indexed: 09/02/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The use of ultrasound-based methods for imaging of subclinical atherosclerosis, including measurement of carotid plaque burden (cPB), is a promising direction for further improvement of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) prediction. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to research the prognostic values' significance of cPB indicators with regard to the short-term progression of polyvascular subclinical atherosclerosis and the long-term onset of MACCE. DESIGN Single-center prospective cohort study. METHODS The study included patients 40-64 years of age. All patients underwent duplex scanning (DS) of the carotid and lower limb arteries. The following cPB indicators were determined: carotid plaque score (cPS), maximum carotid plaque thickness (cPTmax), and carotid total plaque area (cTPA). The combined endpoint included the following components: cardiovascular death; nonfatal myocardial infarction; nonfatal stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA); revascularization of the coronary and/or peripheral arteries. RESULTS The study included 387 patients, among whom 142 (36.7%) patients underwent repeated DS after 12-24 months. The median follow-up time was 20.0 (13.0; 36.5) months. MACCE were recorded in 33 (8.52%) of patients. cTPA and cPTmax, but not cPS, were independently associated with the progression of subclinical polyvascular atherosclerosis over a period of 13.9 months of follow-up. cTPA, but not cPTmax and cPS, was independently associated with the development of MACCE over a period of 20.0 months of follow-up. Only a cTPA > 42.0 mm2 proved to be an independent predictor of both the progression of subclinical polyvascular atherosclerosis and MACCE. CONCLUSION In patients from 40 to 64 years of age with various cardiovascular risks, among the indicators of the cPB, only an increase in cTPA > 42.0 mm2 was shown to be independently associated with an increase in the relative risk (RR) of progression of subclinical polyvascular atherosclerosis by 2.38 (1.08-5.25) times, as well as with the development of MACCE by 3.10 (1.54-6.26) times.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vadim Genkel
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Vorovskogo street 64, Chelyabinsk 454092, Russia
| | - Alla Kuznetsova
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Evgeniy Lebedev
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
- State Autonomous Health Care Institution Order of the Red Banner of Labor 'City Clinical Hospital No. 1 of Chelyabinsk', Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Alexey Salashenko
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Albina Savochkina
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Karina Nikushkina
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Lubov Pykhova
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Veronika Sumerkina
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
| | - Igor Shaposhnik
- Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'South-Ural State Medical University' of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Chelyabinsk, Russia
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Qian C, Su E, Ni X. Learning-based initialization for correntropy-based level sets to segment atherosclerotic plaque in ultrasound images. ULTRASONICS 2023; 127:106826. [PMID: 36058188 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2022.106826] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2021] [Revised: 07/05/2022] [Accepted: 08/11/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Carotid artery atherosclerosis is a significant cause of stroke. Ultrasound imaging has been widely used in the diagnosis of atherosclerosis. Therefore, segmenting the atherosclerotic carotid plaque in an ultrasound image is an important task. Accurate plaque segmentation is helpful for the measurement of carotid plaque burden. This study proposes an automatic method for atherosclerotic plaque segmentation by using correntropy-based level sets (CLS) with learning-based initialization. We introduce the CLS model, containing the point-based local bias-field corrected image fitting method and correntropy-based distance measurement, to overcome the limitations of the ultrasound images. A supervised learning algorithm is employed to solve the automatic initialization problem of the variational methods. The proposed atherosclerotic plaque segmentation method is validated on 29 carotid ultrasound images, obtaining a Dice ratio of 90.6 ± 1.9% and an overlap index of 83.6 ± 3.2%. Moreover, by comparing the standard deviation of each evaluation index, it can be found that the proposed method is more robust for segmenting the atherosclerotic plaque. Our work shows that our proposed method can be more helpful than other variational models for measuring the carotid plaque burden.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chunjun Qian
- The Affiliated Changzhou NO.2 People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Changhzou, Jiangsu, 213004, China; School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Changzhou Institute of Technology, Changzhou, Jiangsu, 213032, China
| | - Enjie Su
- Chinese Medical Hospital of Wujin, Changzhou, Jiangsu, 213100, China
| | - Xinye Ni
- The Affiliated Changzhou NO.2 People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Changhzou, Jiangsu, 213004, China.
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8
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Far wall plaque segmentation and area measurement in common and internal carotid artery ultrasound using U-series architectures: An unseen Artificial Intelligence paradigm for stroke risk assessment. Comput Biol Med 2022; 149:106017. [DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.106017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/18/2022] [Revised: 08/10/2022] [Accepted: 08/20/2022] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
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9
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Segmentation-Based Classification Deep Learning Model Embedded with Explainable AI for COVID-19 Detection in Chest X-ray Scans. Diagnostics (Basel) 2022; 12:diagnostics12092132. [PMID: 36140533 PMCID: PMC9497601 DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics12092132] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2022] [Revised: 08/26/2022] [Accepted: 08/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Background and Motivation: COVID-19 has resulted in a massive loss of life during the last two years. The current imaging-based diagnostic methods for COVID-19 detection in multiclass pneumonia-type chest X-rays are not so successful in clinical practice due to high error rates. Our hypothesis states that if we can have a segmentation-based classification error rate <5%, typically adopted for 510 (K) regulatory purposes, the diagnostic system can be adapted in clinical settings. Method: This study proposes 16 types of segmentation-based classification deep learning-based systems for automatic, rapid, and precise detection of COVID-19. The two deep learning-based segmentation networks, namely UNet and UNet+, along with eight classification models, namely VGG16, VGG19, Xception, InceptionV3, Densenet201, NASNetMobile, Resnet50, and MobileNet, were applied to select the best-suited combination of networks. Using the cross-entropy loss function, the system performance was evaluated by Dice, Jaccard, area-under-the-curve (AUC), and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) and validated using Grad-CAM in explainable AI framework. Results: The best performing segmentation model was UNet, which exhibited the accuracy, loss, Dice, Jaccard, and AUC of 96.35%, 0.15%, 94.88%, 90.38%, and 0.99 (p-value <0.0001), respectively. The best performing segmentation-based classification model was UNet+Xception, which exhibited the accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and AUC of 97.45%, 97.46%, 97.45%, 97.43%, and 0.998 (p-value <0.0001), respectively. Our system outperformed existing methods for segmentation-based classification models. The mean improvement of the UNet+Xception system over all the remaining studies was 8.27%. Conclusion: The segmentation-based classification is a viable option as the hypothesis (error rate <5%) holds true and is thus adaptable in clinical practice.
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10
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Khanna NN, Maindarkar M, Puvvula A, Paul S, Bhagawati M, Ahluwalia P, Ruzsa Z, Sharma A, Munjral S, Kolluri R, Krishnan PR, Singh IM, Laird JR, Fatemi M, Alizad A, Dhanjil SK, Saba L, Balestrieri A, Faa G, Paraskevas KI, Misra DP, Agarwal V, Sharma A, Teji J, Al-Maini M, Nicolaides A, Rathore V, Naidu S, Liblik K, Johri AM, Turk M, Sobel DW, Pareek G, Miner M, Viskovic K, Tsoulfas G, Protogerou AD, Mavrogeni S, Kitas GD, Fouda MM, Kalra MK, Suri JS. Vascular Implications of COVID-19: Role of Radiological Imaging, Artificial Intelligence, and Tissue Characterization: A Special Report. J Cardiovasc Dev Dis 2022; 9:jcdd9080268. [PMID: 36005433 PMCID: PMC9409845 DOI: 10.3390/jcdd9080268] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2022] [Revised: 07/30/2022] [Accepted: 08/09/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has caused a pandemic, infecting nearly 80 million people worldwide, with mortality exceeding six million. The average survival span is just 14 days from the time the symptoms become aggressive. The present study delineates the deep-driven vascular damage in the pulmonary, renal, coronary, and carotid vessels due to SARS-CoV-2. This special report addresses an important gap in the literature in understanding (i) the pathophysiology of vascular damage and the role of medical imaging in the visualization of the damage caused by SARS-CoV-2, and (ii) further understanding the severity of COVID-19 using artificial intelligence (AI)-based tissue characterization (TC). PRISMA was used to select 296 studies for AI-based TC. Radiological imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and ultrasound were selected for imaging of the vasculature infected by COVID-19. Four kinds of hypotheses are presented for showing the vascular damage in radiological images due to COVID-19. Three kinds of AI models, namely, machine learning, deep learning, and transfer learning, are used for TC. Further, the study presents recommendations for improving AI-based architectures for vascular studies. We conclude that the process of vascular damage due to COVID-19 has similarities across vessel types, even though it results in multi-organ dysfunction. Although the mortality rate is ~2% of those infected, the long-term effect of COVID-19 needs monitoring to avoid deaths. AI seems to be penetrating the health care industry at warp speed, and we expect to see an emerging role in patient care, reduce the mortality and morbidity rate.
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Affiliation(s)
- Narendra N. Khanna
- Department of Cardiology, Indraprastha APOLLO Hospitals, New Delhi 110001, India
| | - Mahesh Maindarkar
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong 793022, India
| | - Anudeep Puvvula
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
- Annu’s Hospitals for Skin and Diabetes, Nellore 524101, India
| | - Sudip Paul
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong 793022, India
| | - Mrinalini Bhagawati
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong 793022, India
| | - Puneet Ahluwalia
- Max Institute of Cancer Care, Max Super Specialty Hospital, New Delhi 110017, India
| | - Zoltan Ruzsa
- Invasive Cardiology Division, Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged, 6720 Szeged, Hungary
| | - Aditya Sharma
- Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA
| | - Smiksha Munjral
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
| | - Raghu Kolluri
- Ohio Health Heart and Vascular, Columbus, OH 43214, USA
| | | | - Inder M. Singh
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
| | - John R. Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St Helena, CA 94574, USA
| | - Mostafa Fatemi
- Department of Physiology & Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Azra Alizad
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Surinder K. Dhanjil
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria, 40138 Cagliari, Italy
| | - Antonella Balestrieri
- Cardiovascular Prevention and Research Unit, Department of Pathophysiology, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece
| | - Gavino Faa
- Department of Pathology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria, 09124 Cagliari, Italy
| | | | - Durga Prasanna Misra
- Department of Immunology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow 226014, India
| | - Vikas Agarwal
- Department of Immunology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow 226014, India
| | - Aman Sharma
- Department of Immunology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow 226014, India
| | - Jagjit Teji
- Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60611, USA
| | - Mustafa Al-Maini
- Allergy, Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology Institute, Toronto, ON L4Z 4C4, Canada
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre and University of Nicosia Medical School, 2408 Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Vijay Rathore
- Nephrology Department, Kaiser Permanente, Sacramento, CA 95119, USA
| | - Subbaram Naidu
- Electrical Engineering Department, University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN 55812, USA
| | - Kiera Liblik
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
| | - Amer M. Johri
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
| | - Monika Turk
- The Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study, 27753 Delmenhorst, Germany
| | - David W. Sobel
- Rheumatology Unit, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece
| | - Gyan Pareek
- Minimally Invasive Urology Institute, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
| | - Martin Miner
- Men’s Health Centre, Miriam Hospital Providence, Providence, RI 02906, USA
| | - Klaudija Viskovic
- Department of Radiology and Ultrasound, University Hospital for Infectious Diseases, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
| | - George Tsoulfas
- Department of Surgery, Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
| | - Athanasios D. Protogerou
- Cardiovascular Prevention and Research Unit, Department of Pathophysiology, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece
| | - Sophie Mavrogeni
- Cardiology Clinic, Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre, 17674 Athens, Greece
| | - George D. Kitas
- Academic Affairs, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley DY1 2HQ, UK
- Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, Manchester University, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
| | - Mostafa M. Fouda
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA
| | - Manudeep K. Kalra
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Jasjit S. Suri
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
- Correspondence: ; Tel.: +1-916-749-5628
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11
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Gago L, Vila MDM, Grau M, Remeseiro B, Igual L. An end-to-end framework for intima media measurement and atherosclerotic plaque detection in the carotid artery. COMPUTER METHODS AND PROGRAMS IN BIOMEDICINE 2022; 223:106954. [PMID: 35777216 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2022.106954] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2022] [Revised: 05/22/2022] [Accepted: 06/13/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The detection and delineation of atherosclerotic plaque are usually manually performed by medical experts on the carotid artery. Evidence suggests that this manual process is subject to errors and has a large variability between experts, equipment, and datasets. This paper proposes a robust end-to-end framework for automatic atherosclerotic plaque detection. METHODS The proposed framework is composed of: (1) a semantic segmentation model based on U-Net, with EfficientNet as the backbone, that obtains a segmentation mask with the carotid intima-media region; and (2) a convolutional neural network designed using Bayesian optimization that simultaneously performs a regression to get the average and maximum carotid intima media thickness, and a classification to determine the presence of plaque. RESULTS Our approach improves the state-of-the-art in both co and bulb territories in the REGICOR database, with more than 8000 images, while providing predictions in real-time. The correlation coefficient was 0.89 in the common carotid artery and 0.74 for bulb region, and the F1 score for atherosclerotic plaque detecting was 0.60 and 0.59, respectively. The experimentation carried out includes a comparison with other fully automatic methods for carotid intima media thickness estimation found in the literature. Additionally, we present an extensive experimental study to evaluate the robustness of our proposal, as well as its suitability and efficiency compared to different versions of the framework. CONCLUSIONS The proposed end-to-end framework significantly improves the automatic characterization of atherosclerotic plaque. The generation of the segmented mask can be helpful for practitioners since it allows them to evaluate and interpret the model's results by visual inspection. Furthermore, the proposed framework overcomes the limitations of previous research based on ad-hoc post-processing, which could lead to overestimations in the case of oblique forms of the carotid artery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucas Gago
- Dept. de Matemátiques i Informática, Universitat de Barcelona, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 585, Barcelona, 08007, Spain.
| | - Maria Del Mar Vila
- Dept. de Matemátiques i Informática, Universitat de Barcelona, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 585, Barcelona, 08007, Spain; Dept. Epidemiologia i Salut Pública, IMIM, Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Médiques, Dr. Aiguader 88, Barcelona, 08003, Spain; CIBER Enfermedades Cardiovasculares, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Monforte de Lemos 3-5, Pabellón 11, Madrid, 28029, Spain
| | - Maria Grau
- Dept. de Medicina, Universitat de Barcelona, Carrer Casanova 143, Barcelona, 08036, Spain; Dept. Epidemiologia i Salut Pública, IMIM, Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Médiques, Dr. Aiguader 88, Barcelona, 08003, Spain; CIBER Enfermedades Cardiovasculares, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Monforte de Lemos 3-5, Pabellón 11, Madrid, 28029, Spain
| | - Beatriz Remeseiro
- Dept. of Computer Science, Universidad de Oviedo, Campus de Gijón s/n, Gijón, 33203, Spain
| | - Laura Igual
- Dept. de Matemátiques i Informática, Universitat de Barcelona, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 585, Barcelona, 08007, Spain
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12
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Saba L, Antignani PL, Gupta A, Cau R, Paraskevas KI, Poredos P, Wasserman B, Kamel H, Avgerinos ED, Salgado R, Caobelli F, Aluigi L, Savastano L, Brown M, Hatsukami T, Hussein E, Suri JS, Mansilha A, Wintermark M, Staub D, Montequin JF, Rodriguez RTT, Balu N, Pitha J, Kooi ME, Lal BK, Spence JD, Lanzino G, Marcus HS, Mancini M, Chaturvedi S, Blinc A. International Union of Angiology (IUA) consensus paper on imaging strategies in atherosclerotic carotid artery imaging: From basic strategies to advanced approaches. Atherosclerosis 2022; 354:23-40. [DOI: 10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2022.06.1014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2022] [Revised: 06/10/2022] [Accepted: 06/14/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
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13
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Suri JS, Bhagawati M, Paul S, Protogeron A, Sfikakis PP, Kitas GD, Khanna NN, Ruzsa Z, Sharma AM, Saxena S, Faa G, Paraskevas KI, Laird JR, Johri AM, Saba L, Kalra M. Understanding the bias in machine learning systems for cardiovascular disease risk assessment: The first of its kind review. Comput Biol Med 2022; 142:105204. [DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.105204] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2021] [Revised: 12/29/2021] [Accepted: 12/29/2021] [Indexed: 02/09/2023]
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14
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Carotid Ultrasound Boundary Study (CUBS): Technical considerations on an open multi-center analysis of computerized measurement systems for intima-media thickness measurement on common carotid artery longitudinal B-mode ultrasound scans. Comput Biol Med 2022; 144:105333. [DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105333] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2021] [Revised: 02/02/2022] [Accepted: 02/16/2022] [Indexed: 01/17/2023]
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15
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Kumar Y, Koul A, Singla R, Ijaz MF. Artificial intelligence in disease diagnosis: a systematic literature review, synthesizing framework and future research agenda. JOURNAL OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANIZED COMPUTING 2022; 14:8459-8486. [PMID: 35039756 PMCID: PMC8754556 DOI: 10.1007/s12652-021-03612-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 117] [Impact Index Per Article: 58.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/04/2020] [Accepted: 11/18/2021] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Artificial intelligence can assist providers in a variety of patient care and intelligent health systems. Artificial intelligence techniques ranging from machine learning to deep learning are prevalent in healthcare for disease diagnosis, drug discovery, and patient risk identification. Numerous medical data sources are required to perfectly diagnose diseases using artificial intelligence techniques, such as ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, mammography, genomics, computed tomography scan, etc. Furthermore, artificial intelligence primarily enhanced the infirmary experience and sped up preparing patients to continue their rehabilitation at home. This article covers the comprehensive survey based on artificial intelligence techniques to diagnose numerous diseases such as Alzheimer, cancer, diabetes, chronic heart disease, tuberculosis, stroke and cerebrovascular, hypertension, skin, and liver disease. We conducted an extensive survey including the used medical imaging dataset and their feature extraction and classification process for predictions. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines are used to select the articles published up to October 2020 on the Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed, Excerpta Medical Database, and Psychology Information for early prediction of distinct kinds of diseases using artificial intelligence-based techniques. Based on the study of different articles on disease diagnosis, the results are also compared using various quality parameters such as prediction rate, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, the area under curve precision, recall, and F1-score.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yogesh Kumar
- Department of Computer Engineering, Indus Institute of Technology and Engineering, Indus University, Ahmedabad, 382115 India
| | | | - Ruchi Singla
- Department of Research, Innovations, Sponsored Projects and Entrepreneurship, CGC Landran, Mohali, India
| | - Muhammad Fazal Ijaz
- Department of Intelligent Mechatronics Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, 05006 South Korea
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16
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Unseen Artificial Intelligence-Deep Learning Paradigm for Segmentation of Low Atherosclerotic Plaque in Carotid Ultrasound: A Multicenter Cardiovascular Study. Diagnostics (Basel) 2021; 11:diagnostics11122257. [PMID: 34943494 PMCID: PMC8699942 DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics11122257] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2021] [Revised: 11/27/2021] [Accepted: 11/30/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Background: The early detection of carotid wall plaque is recommended in the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in moderate-risk patients. Previous techniques for B-mode carotid atherosclerotic wall plaque segmentation used artificial intelligence (AI) methods on monoethnic databases, where training and testing are from the “same” ethnic group (“Seen AI”). Therefore, the versatility of the system is questionable. This is the first study of its kind that uses the “Unseen AI” paradigm where training and testing are from “different” ethnic groups. We hypothesized that deep learning (DL) models should perform in 10% proximity between “Unseen AI” and “Seen AI”. Methodology: Two cohorts from multi-ethnic groups (330 Japanese and 300 Hong Kong (HK)) were used for the validation of our hypothesis. We used a four-layered UNet architecture for the segmentation of the atherosclerotic wall with low plaque. “Unseen AI” (training: Japanese, testing: HK or vice versa) and “Seen AI” experiments (single ethnicity or mixed ethnicity) were performed. Evaluation was conducted by measuring the wall plaque area. Statistical tests were conducted for its stability and reliability. Results: When using the UNet DL architecture, the “Unseen AI” pair one (Training: 330 Japanese and Testing: 300 HK), the mean accuracy, dice-similarity, and correlation-coefficient were 98.55, 78.38, and 0.80 (p < 0.0001), respectively, while for “Unseen AI” pair two (Training: 300 HK and Testing: 330 Japanese), these were 98.67, 82.49, and 0.87 (p < 0.0001), respectively. Using “Seen AI”, the same parameters were 99.01, 86.89 and 0.92 (p < 0.0001), respectively. Conclusion: We demonstrated that “Unseen AI” was in close proximity (<10%) to “Seen AI”, validating our DL model for low atherosclerotic wall plaque segmentation. The online system runs < 1 s.
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17
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Jain PK, Sharma N, Saba L, Paraskevas KI, Kalra MK, Johri A, Nicolaides AN, Suri JS. Automated deep learning-based paradigm for high-risk plaque detection in B-mode common carotid ultrasound scans: an asymptomatic Japanese cohort study. INT ANGIOL 2021; 41:9-23. [PMID: 34825801 DOI: 10.23736/s0392-9590.21.04771-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The death due to stroke is caused by embolism of the arteries which is due to the rupture of the atherosclerotic lesions in carotid arteries. The lesion formation is over time, and thus, early screening is recommended for asymptomatic and moderate-risk patients. The previous techniques adopted conventional methods or semi-automated and, more recently, machine learning solutions. A handful of studies have emerged based on solo deep learning (SDL) models such as UNet architecture. METHODS The proposed research is the first to adopt hybrid deep learning (HDL) artificial intelligence models such as SegNet-UNet. This model is benchmarked against UNet and advanced conventional models using scale-space such as AtheroEdge 2.0 (AtheroPoint, CA, USA). All our resultant statistics of the three systems were in the order of UNet, SegNet-UNet, and AtheroEdge 2.0. RESULTS Using the database of 379 ultrasound scans from a Japanese cohort of 190 patients having moderate risk and implementing the cross-validation deep learning framework, our system performance using area-under-the-curve (AUC) for UNet, SegNet-UNet, and AtheroEdge 2.0 were 0.93, 0.94, and 0.95 (p<0.001), respectively. The coefficient of correlation between the three systems and ground truth (GT) were: 0.82, 0.89, and 0.85 (p<0.001 for all three), respectively. The mean absolute area error for the three systems against manual GT was 4.07±4.70 mm2, 3.11±3.92 mm2, 3.72±4.76 mm2, respectively, proving the superior performance SegNet-UNet against UNet and AtheroEdge 2.0, respectively. Statistical tests were also conducted for their reliability and stability. CONCLUSIONS The proposed study demonstrates a fast, accurate, and reliable solution for early detection and quantification of plaque lesions in common carotid artery ultrasound scans. The system runs on a test US image in < 1 second, proving overall performance to be clinically reliable.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pankaj K Jain
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, India
| | - Neeraj Sharma
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, India
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Cagliari University Hospital, Cagliari, Italy
| | | | - Mandeep K Kalra
- Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Amer Johri
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada
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18
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Al-Mohannadi A, Al-Maadeed S, Elharrouss O, Sadasivuni KK. Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Ultrasound IMC Segmentation and cIMT Measurement. SENSORS (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2021; 21:6839. [PMID: 34696054 PMCID: PMC8541435 DOI: 10.3390/s21206839] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2021] [Revised: 09/26/2021] [Accepted: 10/09/2021] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) have shown a huge impact on the number of deaths in the world. Thus, common carotid artery (CCA) segmentation and intima-media thickness (IMT) measurements have been significantly implemented to perform early diagnosis of CVDs by analyzing IMT features. Using computer vision algorithms on CCA images is not widely used for this type of diagnosis, due to the complexity and the lack of dataset to do it. The advancement of deep learning techniques has made accurate early diagnosis from images possible. In this paper, a deep-learning-based approach is proposed to apply semantic segmentation for intima-media complex (IMC) and to calculate the cIMT measurement. In order to overcome the lack of large-scale datasets, an encoder-decoder-based model is proposed using multi-image inputs that can help achieve good learning for the model using different features. The obtained results were evaluated using different image segmentation metrics which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. In addition, IMT thickness is computed, and the experiment showed that the proposed model is robust and fully automated compared to the state-of-the-art work.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aisha Al-Mohannadi
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar; (A.A.-M.); (O.E.)
| | - Somaya Al-Maadeed
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar; (A.A.-M.); (O.E.)
| | - Omar Elharrouss
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha P.O. Box 2713, Qatar; (A.A.-M.); (O.E.)
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19
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Review of imaging biomarkers for the vulnerable carotid plaque. JVS Vasc Sci 2021; 2:149-158. [PMID: 34617065 PMCID: PMC8489200 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvssci.2021.03.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2020] [Accepted: 03/23/2021] [Indexed: 12/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Identification of carotid artery atherosclerosis is conventionally based on measurements of luminal stenosis. However, histopathologic studies demonstrate considerable differences between plaques with identical degrees of stenosis and indicate that certain plaque features are associated with increased risk for ischemic events. As a result of the rapid technological evolution in medical imaging, several important steps have been taken in the field of carotid plaque imaging allowing us to visualize the carotid atherosclerotic plaque and its composition in great detail. For computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and ultrasound scan, evidence has accumulated on novel imaging-based markers that confer information on carotid plaque vulnerability, such as intraplaque hemorrhage and lipid-rich necrotic cores. In terms of the imaging-based identification of individuals at high risk of stroke, routine assessments of such imaging markers are the way forward for improving current clinical practice. The current review highlights the main characteristics of the vulnerable plaque indicating their role in the etiology of ischemic stroke as identified by intensive plaque imaging.
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20
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Jain PK, Sharma N, Giannopoulos AA, Saba L, Nicolaides A, Suri JS. Hybrid deep learning segmentation models for atherosclerotic plaque in internal carotid artery B-mode ultrasound. Comput Biol Med 2021; 136:104721. [PMID: 34371320 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104721] [Citation(s) in RCA: 52] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2021] [Revised: 07/26/2021] [Accepted: 07/27/2021] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
Abstract
The automated and accurate carotid plaque segmentation in B-mode ultrasound (US) is an essential part of stroke risk stratification. Previous segmented methods used AtheroEdge™ 2.0 (AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA) for the common carotid artery (CCA). This study focuses on automated plaque segmentation in the internal carotid artery (ICA) using solo deep learning (SDL) and hybrid deep learning (HDL) models. The methodology consists of a novel design of 10 types of SDL/HDL models (AtheroEdge™ 3.0 systems (AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA) with a depth of four layers each. Five of the models use cross-entropy (CE)-loss, and the other five models use Dice similarity coefficient (DSC)-loss functions derived from UNet, UNet+, SegNet, SegNet-UNet, and SegNet-UNet+. The K10 protocol (Train:Test:90%:10%) was applied for all 10 models for training and predicting (segmenting) the plaque region, which was then quantified to compute the plaque area in mm2. Further, the data augmentation effect was analyzed. The database consisted of 970 ICA B-mode US scans taken from 99 moderate to high-risk patients. Using the difference area threshold of 10 mm2 between ground truth (GT) and artificial intelligence (AI), the area under the curve (AUC) values were 0.91, 0.911, 0.908, 0.905, and 0.898, all with a p-value of <0.001 (for CE-loss models) and 0.883, 0.889, 0.905, 0.889, and 0.907, all with a p-value of <0.001 (for DSC-loss models). The correlations between the AI-based plaque area and GT plaque area were 0.98, 0.96, 0.97, 0.98, and 0.97, all with a p-value of <0.001 (for CE-loss models) and 0.98, 0.98, 0.97, 0.98, and 0.98 (for DSC-loss models). Overall, the online system performs plaque segmentation in less than 1 s. We validate our hypothesis that HDL and SDL models demonstrate comparable performance. SegNet-UNet was the best-performing hybrid architecture.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria (A.O.U.), Cagliari, Italy
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Jasjit S Suri
- Stroke Diagnostic and Monitoring Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, USA.
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21
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Saba L, Sanagala SS, Gupta SK, Koppula VK, Johri AM, Khanna NN, Mavrogeni S, Laird JR, Pareek G, Miner M, Sfikakis PP, Protogerou A, Misra DP, Agarwal V, Sharma AM, Viswanathan V, Rathore VS, Turk M, Kolluri R, Viskovic K, Cuadrado-Godia E, Kitas GD, Sharma N, Nicolaides A, Suri JS. Multimodality carotid plaque tissue characterization and classification in the artificial intelligence paradigm: a narrative review for stroke application. ANNALS OF TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE 2021; 9:1206. [PMID: 34430647 PMCID: PMC8350643 DOI: 10.21037/atm-20-7676] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2020] [Accepted: 02/25/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States of America and globally. Carotid arterial plaque, a cause and also a marker of such CVD, can be detected by various non-invasive imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer tomography (CT), and ultrasound (US). Characterization and classification of carotid plaque-type in these imaging modalities, especially into symptomatic and asymptomatic plaque, helps in the planning of carotid endarterectomy or stenting. It can be challenging to characterize plaque components due to (I) partial volume effect in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or (II) varying Hausdorff values in plaque regions in CT, and (III) attenuation of echoes reflected by the plaque during US causing acoustic shadowing. Artificial intelligence (AI) methods have become an indispensable part of healthcare and their applications to the non-invasive imaging technologies such as MRI, CT, and the US. In this narrative review, three main types of AI models (machine learning, deep learning, and transfer learning) are analyzed when applied to MRI, CT, and the US. A link between carotid plaque characteristics and the risk of coronary artery disease is presented. With regard to characterization, we review tools and techniques that use AI models to distinguish carotid plaque types based on signal processing and feature strengths. We conclude that AI-based solutions offer an accurate and robust path for tissue characterization and classification for carotid artery plaque imaging in all three imaging modalities. Due to cost, user-friendliness, and clinical effectiveness, AI in the US has dominated the most.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria (AOU), Cagliari, Italy
| | - Skandha S Sanagala
- CSE Department, CMR College of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad, India.,CSE Department, Bennett University, Greater Noida, UP, India
| | - Suneet K Gupta
- CSE Department, Bennett University, Greater Noida, UP, India
| | - Vijaya K Koppula
- CSE Department, CMR College of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad, India
| | - Amer M Johri
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
| | - Narendra N Khanna
- Department of Cardiology, Indraprastha APOLLO Hospitals, New Delhi, India
| | - Sophie Mavrogeni
- Cardiology Clinic, Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center, Athens, Greece
| | - John R Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St Helena, CA, USA
| | - Gyan Pareek
- Minimally Invasive Urology Institute, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Martin Miner
- Men's Health Center, Miriam Hospital Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Petros P Sfikakis
- Rheumatology Unit, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
| | - Athanasios Protogerou
- Department of Cardiovascular Prevention, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Durga P Misra
- Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, SGPGIMS, Lucknow, India
| | - Vikas Agarwal
- Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, SGPGIMS, Lucknow, India
| | - Aditya M Sharma
- Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Virginia, VA, USA
| | - Vijay Viswanathan
- MV Hospital for Diabetes & Professor M Viswanathan Diabetes Research Centre, Chennai, India
| | - Vijay S Rathore
- Nephrology Department, Kaiser Permanente, Sacramento, CA, USA
| | - Monika Turk
- The Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany
| | | | | | | | - George D Kitas
- R & D Academic Affairs, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley, UK
| | - Neeraj Sharma
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, IIT-BHU, Banaras, UP, India
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Jasjit S Suri
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, USA
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Biswas M, Saba L, Omerzu T, Johri AM, Khanna NN, Viskovic K, Mavrogeni S, Laird JR, Pareek G, Miner M, Balestrieri A, Sfikakis PP, Protogerou A, Misra DP, Agarwal V, Kitas GD, Kolluri R, Sharma A, Viswanathan V, Ruzsa Z, Nicolaides A, Suri JS. A Review on Joint Carotid Intima-Media Thickness and Plaque Area Measurement in Ultrasound for Cardiovascular/Stroke Risk Monitoring: Artificial Intelligence Framework. J Digit Imaging 2021; 34:581-604. [PMID: 34080104 PMCID: PMC8329154 DOI: 10.1007/s10278-021-00461-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/01/2020] [Revised: 03/19/2021] [Accepted: 05/04/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the top ten leading causes of death worldwide. Atherosclerosis disease in the arteries is the main cause of the CVD, leading to myocardial infarction and stroke. The two primary image-based phenotypes used for monitoring the atherosclerosis burden is carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) and plaque area (PA). Earlier segmentation and measurement methods were based on ad hoc conventional and semi-automated digital imaging solutions, which are unreliable, tedious, slow, and not robust. This study reviews the modern and automated methods such as artificial intelligence (AI)-based. Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) can provide automated techniques in the detection and measurement of cIMT and PA from carotid vascular images. Both ML and DL techniques are examples of supervised learning, i.e., learn from "ground truth" images and transformation of test images that are not part of the training. This review summarizes (1) the evolution and impact of the fast-changing AI technology on cIMT/PA measurement, (2) the mathematical representations of ML/DL methods, and (3) segmentation approaches for cIMT/PA regions in carotid scans based for (a) region-of-interest detection and (b) lumen-intima and media-adventitia interface detection using ML/DL frameworks. AI-based methods for cIMT/PA segmentation have emerged for CVD/stroke risk monitoring and may expand to the recommended parameters for atherosclerosis assessment by carotid ultrasound.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria (A.O.U.), Cagliari, Italy
| | - Tomaž Omerzu
- Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
| | - Amer M Johri
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada
| | - Narendra N Khanna
- Department of Cardiology, Indraprastha APOLLO Hospitals, New Delhi, India
| | | | - Sophie Mavrogeni
- Cardiology Clinic, Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center, Athens, Greece
| | - John R Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St Helena, CA, USA
| | - Gyan Pareek
- Minimally Invasive Urology Institute, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Martin Miner
- Men's Health Center, Miriam Hospital Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Antonella Balestrieri
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria (A.O.U.), Cagliari, Italy
| | - Petros P Sfikakis
- Rheumatology Unit, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | | | | | - Vikas Agarwal
- Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, UP, India
| | - George D Kitas
- Academic Affairs, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley, UK
- Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, Manchester University, Manchester, UK
| | | | - Aditya Sharma
- Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
| | - Vijay Viswanathan
- MV Hospital for Diabetes and Professor M Viswanathan Diabetes Research Centre, Chennai, India
| | - Zoltan Ruzsa
- Invasive Cardiology Division, University of Szeged, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre, University of Nicosia Medical School, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Jasjit S Suri
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, 95661, USA.
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23
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Agarwal M, Saba L, Gupta SK, Johri AM, Khanna NN, Mavrogeni S, Laird JR, Pareek G, Miner M, Sfikakis PP, Protogerou A, Sharma AM, Viswanathan V, Kitas GD, Nicolaides A, Suri JS. Wilson disease tissue classification and characterization using seven artificial intelligence models embedded with 3D optimization paradigm on a weak training brain magnetic resonance imaging datasets: a supercomputer application. Med Biol Eng Comput 2021; 59:511-533. [PMID: 33547549 DOI: 10.1007/s11517-021-02322-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2020] [Accepted: 01/18/2021] [Indexed: 01/16/2023]
Abstract
Wilson's disease (WD) is caused by copper accumulation in the brain and liver, and if not treated early, can lead to severe disability and death. WD has shown white matter hyperintensity (WMH) in the brain magnetic resonance scans (MRI) scans, but the diagnosis is challenging due to (i) subtle intensity changes and (ii) weak training MRI when using artificial intelligence (AI). Design and validate seven types of high-performing AI-based computer-aided design (CADx) systems consisting of 3D optimized classification, and characterization of WD against controls. We propose a "conventional deep convolution neural network" (cDCNN) and an "improved DCNN" (iDCNN) where rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function was modified ensuring "differentiable at zero." Three-dimensional optimization was achieved by recording accuracy while changing the CNN layers and augmentation by several folds. WD was characterized using (i) CNN-based feature map strength and (ii) Bispectrum strengths of pixels having higher probabilities of WD. We further computed the (a) area under the curve (AUC), (b) diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), (c) reliability, and (d) stability and (e) benchmarking. Optimal results were achieved using 9 layers of CNN, with 4-fold augmentation. iDCNN yields superior performance compared to cDCNN with accuracy and AUC of 98.28 ± 1.55, 0.99 (p < 0.0001), and 97.19 ± 2.53%, 0.984 (p < 0.0001), respectively. DOR of iDCNN outperformed cDCNN fourfold. iDCNN also outperformed (a) transfer learning-based "Inception V3" paradigm by 11.92% and (b) four types of "conventional machine learning-based systems": k-NN, decision tree, support vector machine, and random forest by 55.13%, 28.36%, 15.35%, and 14.11%, respectively. The AI-based systems can potentially be useful in the early WD diagnosis. Graphical Abstract.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mohit Agarwal
- CSE Department, Bennett University, Greater Noida, UP, India
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria (A.O.U.), Cagliari, Italy
| | - Suneet K Gupta
- CSE Department, Bennett University, Greater Noida, UP, India
| | - Amer M Johri
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen's University, Ontario, Kingston, Canada
| | - Narendra N Khanna
- Department of Cardiology, Indraprastha APOLLO Hospitals, New Delhi, India
| | - Sophie Mavrogeni
- Cardiology Clinic, Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center, Athens, Greece
| | - John R Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St. Helena, CA, USA
| | - Gyan Pareek
- Minimally Invasive Urology Institute, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Martin Miner
- Men's Health Center, Miriam Hospital Providence, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Petros P Sfikakis
- Rheumatology Unit, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Athanasios Protogerou
- Department of Cardiovascular Prevention, National and Kapodistrian Univ. of Athens, Athens, Greece
| | - Aditya M Sharma
- Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
| | - Vijay Viswanathan
- MV Hospital for Diabetes & Professor M Viswanathan Diabetes Research Centre, Chennai, India
| | - George D Kitas
- R & D Academic Affairs, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley, UK
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | - Jasjit S Suri
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, 95661, USA.
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24
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Low-Cost Office-Based Cardiovascular Risk Stratification Using Machine Learning and Focused Carotid Ultrasound in an Asian-Indian Cohort. J Med Syst 2020; 44:208. [DOI: 10.1007/s10916-020-01675-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2020] [Accepted: 11/09/2020] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
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25
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Jamthikar AD, Gupta D, Saba L, Khanna NN, Viskovic K, Mavrogeni S, Laird JR, Sattar N, Johri AM, Pareek G, Miner M, Sfikakis PP, Protogerou A, Viswanathan V, Sharma A, Kitas GD, Nicolaides A, Kolluri R, Suri JS. Artificial intelligence framework for predictive cardiovascular and stroke risk assessment models: A narrative review of integrated approaches using carotid ultrasound. Comput Biol Med 2020; 126:104043. [PMID: 33065389 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2020.104043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2020] [Revised: 09/10/2020] [Accepted: 10/04/2020] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
RECENT FINDINGS Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality and poses challenges for healthcare providers globally. Risk-based approaches for the management of CVD are becoming popular for recommending treatment plans for asymptomatic individuals. Several conventional predictive CVD risk models based do not provide an accurate CVD risk assessment for patients with different baseline risk profiles. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have changed the landscape of CVD risk assessment and demonstrated a better performance when compared against conventional models, mainly due to its ability to handle the input nonlinear variations. Further, it has the flexibility to add risk factors derived from medical imaging modalities that image the morphology of the plaque. The integration of noninvasive carotid ultrasound image-based phenotypes with conventional risk factors in the AI framework has further provided stronger power for CVD risk prediction, so-called "integrated predictive CVD risk models." PURPOSE of the review: The objective of this review is (i) to understand several aspects in the development of predictive CVD risk models, (ii) to explore current conventional predictive risk models and their successes and challenges, and (iii) to refine the search for predictive CVD risk models using noninvasive carotid ultrasound as an exemplar in the artificial intelligence-based framework. CONCLUSION Conventional predictive CVD risk models are suboptimal and could be improved. This review examines the potential to include more noninvasive image-based phenotypes in the CVD risk assessment using powerful AI-based strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ankush D Jamthikar
- Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
| | - Deep Gupta
- Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, University of Cagliari, Italy
| | - Narendra N Khanna
- Department of Cardiology, Indraprastha APOLLO Hospitals, New Delhi, India
| | - Klaudija Viskovic
- Department of Radiology and Ultrasound, University Hospital for Infectious Diseases, Croatia
| | - Sophie Mavrogeni
- Cardiology Clinic, Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center, Athens, Greece
| | - John R Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St Helena, CA, USA
| | - Naveed Sattar
- Institute of Cardiovascular & Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
| | - Amer M Johri
- Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
| | - Gyan Pareek
- Minimally Invasive Urology Institute, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Martin Miner
- Men's Health Center, Miriam Hospital Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Petros P Sfikakis
- Rheumatology Unit, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
| | - Athanasios Protogerou
- Department of Cardiovascular Prevention & Research Unit Clinic & Laboratory of Pathophysiology, National and Kapodistrian Univ. of Athens, Greece
| | - Vijay Viswanathan
- MV Hospital for Diabetes and Professor M Viswanathan Diabetes Research Centre, Chennai, India
| | - Aditya Sharma
- Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
| | - George D Kitas
- R & D Academic Affairs, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley, United Kingdom
| | - Andrew Nicolaides
- Vascular Screening and Diagnostic Centre and University of Nicosia Medical School, Nicosia, Cyprus
| | | | - Jasjit S Suri
- Stroke Monitoring and Diagnostic Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA, USA.
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