Cancer-Net SCa-Synth: An Open Access Synthetically Generated 2D Skin Lesion Dataset for Skin Cancer Classification

In the United States, skin cancer ranks as the most commonly diagnosed cancer, presenting a significant public health issue due to its high rates of occurrence and the risk of serious complications if not caught early. Recent advancements in dataset curation and deep learning have shown promise in quick and accurate detection of skin cancer. However, current open-source datasets have significant class imbalances which impedes the effectiveness of these deep learning models. In healthcare, generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have been employed to create synthetic data, addressing data imbalance in datasets by augmenting underrepresented classes and enhancing the overall quality and performance of machine learning models. In this paper, we build on top of previous work by leveraging new advancements in generative AI, notably Stable Diffusion and DreamBooth. We introduce Cancer-Net SCa-Synth, an open access synthetically generated 2D skin lesion dataset for skin cancer classification. Further analysis on the data effectiveness by comparing the ISIC 2020 test set performance for training with and without these synthetic images for a simple model highlights the benefits of leveraging synthetic data to improve performance. Cancer-Net SCa-Synth is publicly available at https://github.com/catai9/Cancer-Net-SCa-Synth as part of a global open-source initiative for accelerating machine learning for cancer care.

Enhancing Trust in Clinically Significant Prostate Cancer Prediction with Multiple Magnetic Resonance Imaging Modalities

In the United States, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of deaths in males with a predicted 35,250 deaths in 2024. However, most diagnoses are non-lethal and deemed clinically insignificant which means that the patient will likely not be impacted by the cancer over their lifetime. As a result, numerous research studies have explored the accuracy of predicting clinical significance of prostate cancer based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modalities and deep neural networks. Despite their high performance, these models are not trusted by most clinical scientists as they are trained solely on a single modality whereas clinical scientists often use multiple magnetic resonance imaging modalities during their diagnosis. In this paper, we investigate combining multiple MRI modalities to train a deep learning model to enhance trust in the models for clinically significant prostate cancer prediction. The promising performance and proposed training pipeline showcase the benefits of incorporating multiple MRI modalities for enhanced trust and accuracy.

Decoding Diffusion: A Scalable Framework for Unsupervised Analysis of Latent Space Biases and Representations Using Natural Language Prompts

Recent advances in image generation have made diffusion models powerful tools for creating high-quality images. However, their iterative denoising process makes understanding and interpreting their semantic latent spaces more challenging than other generative models, such as GANs. Recent methods have attempted to address this issue by identifying semantically meaningful directions within the latent space. However, they often need manual interpretation or are limited in the number of vectors that can be trained, restricting their scope and utility. This paper proposes a novel framework for unsupervised exploration of diffusion latent spaces. We directly leverage natural language prompts and image captions to map latent directions. This method allows for the automatic understanding of hidden features and supports a broader range of analysis without the need to train specific vectors. Our method provides a more scalable and interpretable understanding of the semantic knowledge encoded within diffusion models, facilitating comprehensive analysis of latent biases and the nuanced representations these models learn. Experimental results show that our framework can uncover hidden patterns and associations in various domains, offering new insights into the interpretability of diffusion model latent spaces.

MetaFood3D: Large 3D Food Object Dataset with Nutrition Values

Food computing is both important and challenging in computer vision (CV). It significantly contributes to the development of CV algorithms due to its frequent presence in datasets across various applications, ranging from classification and instance segmentation to 3D reconstruction. The polymorphic shapes and textures of food, coupled with high variation in forms and vast multimodal information, including language descriptions and nutritional data, make food computing a complex and demanding task for modern CV algorithms. 3D food modeling is a new frontier for addressing food-related problems, due to its inherent capability to deal with random camera views and its straightforward representation for calculating food portion size. However, the primary hurdle in the development of algorithms for food object analysis is the lack of nutrition values in existing 3D datasets. Moreover, in the broader field of 3D research, there is a critical need for domain-specific test datasets. To bridge the gap between general 3D vision and food computing research, we propose MetaFood3D. This dataset consists of 637 meticulously labeled 3D food objects across 108 categories, featuring detailed nutrition information, weight, and food codes linked to a comprehensive nutrition database. The dataset emphasizes intra-class diversity and includes rich modalities such as textured mesh files, RGB-D videos, and segmentation masks. Experimental results demonstrate our dataset's significant potential for improving algorithm performance, highlight the challenging gap between video captures and 3D scanned data, and show the strength of the MetaFood3D dataset in high-quality data generation, simulation, and augmentation.

MetaFood CVPR 2024 Challenge on Physically Informed 3D Food Reconstruction: Methods and Results

The increasing interest in computer vision applications for nutrition and dietary monitoring has led to the development of advanced 3D reconstruction techniques for food items. However, the scarcity of high-quality data and limited collaboration between industry and academia have constrained progress in this field. Building on recent advancements in 3D reconstruction, we host the MetaFood Workshop and its challenge for Physically Informed 3D Food Reconstruction. This challenge focuses on reconstructing volume-accurate 3D models of food items from 2D images, using a visible checkerboard as a size reference. Participants were tasked with reconstructing 3D models for 20 selected food items of varying difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard. The easy level provides 200 images, the medium level provides 30 images, and the hard level provides only 1 image for reconstruction. In total, 16 teams submitted results in the final testing phase. The solutions developed in this challenge achieved promising results in 3D food reconstruction, with significant potential for improving portion estimation for dietary assessment and nutritional monitoring. More details about this workshop challenge and access to the dataset can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/cvpr-metafood-2024.

Empowering Tuberculosis Screening with Explainable Self-Supervised Deep Neural Networks

Tuberculosis persists as a global health crisis, especially in resource-limited populations and remote regions, with more than 10 million individuals newly infected annually. It stands as a stark symbol of inequity in public health. Tuberculosis impacts roughly a quarter of the global populace, with the majority of cases concentrated in eight countries, accounting for two-thirds of all tuberculosis infections. Although a severe ailment, tuberculosis is both curable and manageable. However, early detection and screening of at-risk populations are imperative. Chest x-ray stands as the predominant imaging technique utilized in tuberculosis screening efforts. However, x-ray screening necessitates skilled radiologists, a resource often scarce, particularly in remote regions with limited resources. Consequently, there is a pressing need for artificial intelligence (AI)-powered systems to support clinicians and healthcare providers in swift screening. However, training a reliable AI model necessitates large-scale high-quality data, which can be difficult and costly to acquire. Inspired by these challenges, in this work, we introduce an explainable self-supervised self-train learning network tailored for tuberculosis case screening. The network achieves an outstanding overall accuracy of 98.14% and demonstrates high recall and precision rates of 95.72% and 99.44%, respectively, in identifying tuberculosis cases, effectively capturing clinically significant features.

Understanding the Limitations of Diffusion Concept Algebra Through Food

Image generation techniques, particularly latent diffusion models, have exploded in popularity in recent years. Many techniques have been developed to manipulate and clarify the semantic concepts these large-scale models learn, offering crucial insights into biases and concept relationships. However, these techniques are often only validated in conventional realms of human or animal faces and artistic style transitions. The food domain offers unique challenges through complex compositions and regional biases, which can shed light on the limitations and opportunities within existing methods. Through the lens of food imagery, we analyze both qualitative and quantitative patterns within a concept traversal technique. We reveal measurable insights into the model's ability to capture and represent the nuances of culinary diversity, while also identifying areas where the model's biases and limitations emerge.

Using Multiparametric MRI with Optimized Synthetic Correlated Diffusion Imaging to Enhance Breast Cancer Pathologic Complete Response Prediction

In 2020, 685,000 deaths across the world were attributed to breast cancer, underscoring the critical need for innovative and effective breast cancer treatment. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy has recently gained popularity as a promising treatment strategy for breast cancer, attributed to its efficacy in shrinking large tumors and leading to pathologic complete response. However, the current process to recommend neoadjuvant chemotherapy relies on the subjective evaluation of medical experts which contain inherent biases and significant uncertainty. A recent study, utilizing volumetric deep radiomic features extracted from synthetic correlated diffusion imaging (CDI$^s$), demonstrated significant potential in noninvasive breast cancer pathologic complete response prediction. Inspired by the positive outcomes of optimizing CDI$^s$ for prostate cancer delineation, this research investigates the application of optimized CDI$^s$ to enhance breast cancer pathologic complete response prediction. Using multiparametric MRI that fuses optimized CDI$^s$ with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), we obtain a leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy of 93.28%, over 5.5% higher than that previously reported.

NutritionVerse-Direct: Exploring Deep Neural Networks for Multitask Nutrition Prediction from Food Images

Many aging individuals encounter challenges in effectively tracking their dietary intake, exacerbating their susceptibility to nutrition-related health complications. Self-reporting methods are often inaccurate and suffer from substantial bias; however, leveraging intelligent prediction methods can automate and enhance precision in this process. Recent work has explored using computer vision prediction systems to predict nutritional information from food images. Still, these methods are often tailored to specific situations, require other inputs in addition to a food image, or do not provide comprehensive nutritional information. This paper aims to enhance the efficacy of dietary intake estimation by leveraging various neural network architectures to directly predict a meal's nutritional content from its image. Through comprehensive experimentation and evaluation, we present NutritionVerse-Direct, a model utilizing a vision transformer base architecture with three fully connected layers that lead to five regression heads predicting calories (kcal), mass (g), protein (g), fat (g), and carbohydrates (g) present in a meal. NutritionVerse-Direct yields a combined mean average error score on the NutritionVerse-Real dataset of 412.6, an improvement of 25.5% over the Inception-ResNet model, demonstrating its potential for improving dietary intake estimation accuracy.

Improving Breast Cancer Grade Prediction with Multiparametric MRI Created Using Optimized Synthetic Correlated Diffusion Imaging

Breast cancer was diagnosed for over 7.8 million women between 2015 to 2020. Grading plays a vital role in breast cancer treatment planning. However, the current tumor grading method involves extracting tissue from patients, leading to stress, discomfort, and high medical costs. A recent paper leveraging volumetric deep radiomic features from synthetic correlated diffusion imaging (CDI$^s$) for breast cancer grade prediction showed immense promise for noninvasive methods for grading. Motivated by the impact of CDI$^s$ optimization for prostate cancer delineation, this paper examines using optimized CDI$^s$ to improve breast cancer grade prediction. We fuse the optimized CDI$^s$ signal with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to create a multiparametric MRI for each patient. Using a larger patient cohort and training across all the layers of a pretrained MONAI model, we achieve a leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy of 95.79%, over 8% higher compared to that previously reported.