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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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Kumari V, Kumar N, Kumar K S, Kumar A, Skandha SS, Saxena S, Khanna NN, Laird JR, Singh N, Fouda MM, Saba L, Singh R, Suri JS. Deep Learning Paradigm and Its Bias for Coronary Artery Wall Segmentation in Intravascular Ultrasound Scans: A Closer Look. J Cardiovasc Dev Dis 2023; 10:485. [PMID: 38132653 PMCID: PMC10743870 DOI: 10.3390/jcdd10120485] [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: 07/27/2023] [Revised: 10/15/2023] [Accepted: 11/07/2023] [Indexed: 12/23/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION Coronary artery disease (CAD) has the highest mortality rate; therefore, its diagnosis is vital. Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is a high-resolution imaging solution that can image coronary arteries, but the diagnosis software via wall segmentation and quantification has been evolving. In this study, a deep learning (DL) paradigm was explored along with its bias. METHODS Using a PRISMA model, 145 best UNet-based and non-UNet-based methods for wall segmentation were selected and analyzed for their characteristics and scientific and clinical validation. This study computed the coronary wall thickness by estimating the inner and outer borders of the coronary artery IVUS cross-sectional scans. Further, the review explored the bias in the DL system for the first time when it comes to wall segmentation in IVUS scans. Three bias methods, namely (i) ranking, (ii) radial, and (iii) regional area, were applied and compared using a Venn diagram. Finally, the study presented explainable AI (XAI) paradigms in the DL framework. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS UNet provides a powerful paradigm for the segmentation of coronary walls in IVUS scans due to its ability to extract automated features at different scales in encoders, reconstruct the segmented image using decoders, and embed the variants in skip connections. Most of the research was hampered by a lack of motivation for XAI and pruned AI (PAI) models. None of the UNet models met the criteria for bias-free design. For clinical assessment and settings, it is necessary to move from a paper-to-practice approach.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vandana Kumari
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Galgotias University, Greater Noida 201310, India; (V.K.); (S.K.K.)
| | - Naresh Kumar
- Department of Applied Computational Science and Engineering, G L Bajaj Institute of Technology and Management, Greater Noida 201310, India
| | - Sampath Kumar K
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Galgotias University, Greater Noida 201310, India; (V.K.); (S.K.K.)
| | - Ashish Kumar
- School of CSET, Bennett University, Greater Noida 201310, India;
| | - Sanagala S. Skandha
- Department of CSE, CMR College of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad 501401, India;
| | - Sanjay Saxena
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar 751003, India;
| | - Narendra N. Khanna
- Department of Cardiology, Indraprastha APOLLO Hospitals, New Delhi 110076, India;
| | - John R. Laird
- Heart and Vascular Institute, Adventist Health St. Helena, St Helena, CA 94574, USA;
| | - Narpinder Singh
- Department of Food Science and Technology, Graphic Era, Deemed to be University, Dehradun 248002, India;
| | - Mostafa M. Fouda
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA;
| | - Luca Saba
- Department of Radiology, Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria (A.O.U.), 09100 Cagliari, Italy;
| | - Rajesh Singh
- Department of Research and Innovation, Uttaranchal Institute of Technology, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun 248007, India;
| | - Jasjit S. Suri
- Stroke Diagnostics and Monitoring Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
- Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Graphic Era, Deemed to be University, Dehradun 248002, India
- Monitoring and Diagnosis Division, AtheroPoint™, Roseville, CA 95661, USA
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Zhang H, Meng Z, Ru J, Meng Y, Wang K. Application and prospects of AI-based radiomics in ultrasound diagnosis. Vis Comput Ind Biomed Art 2023; 6:20. [PMID: 37828411 PMCID: PMC10570254 DOI: 10.1186/s42492-023-00147-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2023] [Accepted: 09/20/2023] [Indexed: 10/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI)-based radiomics has attracted considerable research attention in the field of medical imaging, including ultrasound diagnosis. Ultrasound imaging has unique advantages such as high temporal resolution, low cost, and no radiation exposure. This renders it a preferred imaging modality for several clinical scenarios. This review includes a detailed introduction to imaging modalities, including Brightness-mode ultrasound, color Doppler flow imaging, ultrasound elastography, contrast-enhanced ultrasound, and multi-modal fusion analysis. It provides an overview of the current status and prospects of AI-based radiomics in ultrasound diagnosis, highlighting the application of AI-based radiomics to static ultrasound images, dynamic ultrasound videos, and multi-modal ultrasound fusion analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haoyan Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
- School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
| | - Zheling Meng
- CAS Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
- School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
| | - Jinyu Ru
- CAS Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
- School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
| | - Yaqing Meng
- CAS Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
- School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
| | - Kun Wang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
- School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
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Attention-Based UNet Deep Learning Model for Plaque Segmentation in Carotid Ultrasound for Stroke Risk Stratification: An Artificial Intelligence Paradigm. J Cardiovasc Dev Dis 2022; 9:jcdd9100326. [PMID: 36286278 PMCID: PMC9604424 DOI: 10.3390/jcdd9100326] [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: 08/21/2022] [Revised: 09/06/2022] [Accepted: 09/14/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Stroke and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) significantly affect the world population. The early detection of such events may prevent the burden of death and costly surgery. Conventional methods are neither automated nor clinically accurate. Artificial Intelligence-based methods of automatically detecting and predicting the severity of CVD and stroke in their early stages are of prime importance. This study proposes an attention-channel-based UNet deep learning (DL) model that identifies the carotid plaques in the internal carotid artery (ICA) and common carotid artery (CCA) images. Our experiments consist of 970 ICA images from the UK, 379 CCA images from diabetic Japanese patients, and 300 CCA images from post-menopausal women from Hong Kong. We combined both CCA images to form an integrated database of 679 images. A rotation transformation technique was applied to 679 CCA images, doubling the database for the experiments. The cross-validation K5 (80% training: 20% testing) protocol was applied for accuracy determination. The results of the Attention-UNet model are benchmarked against UNet, UNet++, and UNet3P models. Visual plaque segmentation showed improvement in the Attention-UNet results compared to the other three models. The correlation coefficient (CC) value for Attention-UNet is 0.96, compared to 0.93, 0.96, and 0.92 for UNet, UNet++, and UNet3P models. Similarly, the AUC value for Attention-UNet is 0.97, compared to 0.964, 0.966, and 0.965 for other models. Conclusively, the Attention-UNet model is beneficial in segmenting very bright and fuzzy plaque images that are hard to diagnose using other methods. Further, we present a multi-ethnic, multi-center, racial bias-free study of stroke risk assessment.
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