EsurvFusion: An evidential multimodal survival fusion model based on Gaussian random fuzzy numbers

Multimodal survival analysis aims to combine heterogeneous data sources (e.g., clinical, imaging, text, genomics) to improve the prediction quality of survival outcomes. However, this task is particularly challenging due to high heterogeneity and noise across data sources, which vary in structure, distribution, and context. Additionally, the ground truth is often censored (uncertain) due to incomplete follow-up data. In this paper, we propose a novel evidential multimodal survival fusion model, EsurvFusion, designed to combine multimodal data at the decision level through an evidence-based decision fusion layer that jointly addresses both data and model uncertainty while incorporating modality-level reliability. Specifically, EsurvFusion first models unimodal data with newly introduced Gaussian random fuzzy numbers, producing unimodal survival predictions along with corresponding aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties. It then estimates modality-level reliability through a reliability discounting layer to correct the misleading impact of noisy data modalities. Finally, a multimodal evidence-based fusion layer is introduced to combine the discounted predictions to form a unified, interpretable multimodal survival analysis model, revealing each modality's influence based on the learned reliability coefficients. This is the first work that studies multimodal survival analysis with both uncertainty and reliability. Extensive experiments on four multimodal survival datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model in handling high heterogeneity data, establishing new state-of-the-art on several benchmarks.

Self-Prior Guided Mamba-UNet Networks for Medical Image Super-Resolution

In this paper, we propose a self-prior guided Mamba-UNet network (SMamba-UNet) for medical image super-resolution. Existing methods are primarily based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) or Transformers. CNNs-based methods fail to capture long-range dependencies, while Transformer-based approaches face heavy calculation challenges due to their quadratic computational complexity. Recently, State Space Models (SSMs) especially Mamba have emerged, capable of modeling long-range dependencies with linear computational complexity. Inspired by Mamba, our approach aims to learn the self-prior multi-scale contextual features under Mamba-UNet networks, which may help to super-resolve low-resolution medical images in an efficient way. Specifically, we obtain self-priors by perturbing the brightness inpainting of the input image during network training, which can learn detailed texture and brightness information that is beneficial for super-resolution. Furthermore, we combine Mamba with Unet network to mine global features at different levels. We also design an improved 2D-Selective-Scan (ISS2D) module to divide image features into different directional sequences to learn long-range dependencies in multiple directions, and adaptively fuse sequence information to enhance super-resolved feature representation. Both qualitative and quantitative experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms current state-of-the-art methods on two public medical datasets: the IXI and fastMRI.

Deform-Mamba Network for MRI Super-Resolution

In this paper, we propose a new architecture, called Deform-Mamba, for MR image super-resolution. Unlike conventional CNN or Transformer-based super-resolution approaches which encounter challenges related to the local respective field or heavy computational cost, our approach aims to effectively explore the local and global information of images. Specifically, we develop a Deform-Mamba encoder which is composed of two branches, modulated deform block and vision Mamba block. We also design a multi-view context module in the bottleneck layer to explore the multi-view contextual content. Thanks to the extracted features of the encoder, which include content-adaptive local and efficient global information, the vision Mamba decoder finally generates high-quality MR images. Moreover, we introduce a contrastive edge loss to promote the reconstruction of edge and contrast related content. Quantitative and qualitative experimental results indicate that our approach on IXI and fastMRI datasets achieves competitive performance.

Discriminative Hamiltonian Variational Autoencoder for Accurate Tumor Segmentation in Data-Scarce Regimes

Deep learning has gained significant attention in medical image segmentation. However, the limited availability of annotated training data presents a challenge to achieving accurate results. In efforts to overcome this challenge, data augmentation techniques have been proposed. However, the majority of these approaches primarily focus on image generation. For segmentation tasks, providing both images and their corresponding target masks is crucial, and the generation of diverse and realistic samples remains a complex task, especially when working with limited training datasets. To this end, we propose a new end-to-end hybrid architecture based on Hamiltonian Variational Autoencoders (HVAE) and a discriminative regularization to improve the quality of generated images. Our method provides an accuracte estimation of the joint distribution of the images and masks, resulting in the generation of realistic medical images with reduced artifacts and off-distribution instances. As generating 3D volumes requires substantial time and memory, our architecture operates on a slice-by-slice basis to segment 3D volumes, capitilizing on the richly augmented dataset. Experiments conducted on two public datasets, BRATS (MRI modality) and HECKTOR (PET modality), demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed method on different medical imaging modalities with limited data.

3D MRI Synthesis with Slice-Based Latent Diffusion Models: Improving Tumor Segmentation Tasks in Data-Scarce Regimes

Despite the increasing use of deep learning in medical image segmentation, the limited availability of annotated training data remains a major challenge due to the time-consuming data acquisition and privacy regulations. In the context of segmentation tasks, providing both medical images and their corresponding target masks is essential. However, conventional data augmentation approaches mainly focus on image synthesis. In this study, we propose a novel slice-based latent diffusion architecture designed to address the complexities of volumetric data generation in a slice-by-slice fashion. This approach extends the joint distribution modeling of medical images and their associated masks, allowing a simultaneous generation of both under data-scarce regimes. Our approach mitigates the computational complexity and memory expensiveness typically associated with diffusion models. Furthermore, our architecture can be conditioned by tumor characteristics, including size, shape, and relative position, thereby providing a diverse range of tumor variations. Experiments on a segmentation task using the BRATS2022 confirm the effectiveness of the synthesized volumes and masks for data augmentation.

End-to-end autoencoding architecture for the simultaneous generation of medical images and corresponding segmentation masks

Despite the increasing use of deep learning in medical image segmentation, acquiring sufficient training data remains a challenge in the medical field. In response, data augmentation techniques have been proposed; however, the generation of diverse and realistic medical images and their corresponding masks remains a difficult task, especially when working with insufficient training sets. To address these limitations, we present an end-to-end architecture based on the Hamiltonian Variational Autoencoder (HVAE). This approach yields an improved posterior distribution approximation compared to traditional Variational Autoencoders (VAE), resulting in higher image generation quality. Our method outperforms generative adversarial architectures under data-scarce conditions, showcasing enhancements in image quality and precise tumor mask synthesis. We conduct experiments on two publicly available datasets, MICCAI's Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge (BRATS), and Head and Neck Tumor Segmentation Challenge (HECKTOR), demonstrating the effectiveness of our method on different medical imaging modalities.

A review of uncertainty quantification in medical image analysis: probabilistic and non-probabilistic methods

The comprehensive integration of machine learning healthcare models within clinical practice remains suboptimal, notwithstanding the proliferation of high-performing solutions reported in the literature. A predominant factor hindering widespread adoption pertains to an insufficiency of evidence affirming the reliability of the aforementioned models. Recently, uncertainty quantification methods have been proposed as a potential solution to quantify the reliability of machine learning models and thus increase the interpretability and acceptability of the result. In this review, we offer a comprehensive overview of prevailing methods proposed to quantify uncertainty inherent in machine learning models developed for various medical image tasks. Contrary to earlier reviews that exclusively focused on probabilistic methods, this review also explores non-probabilistic approaches, thereby furnishing a more holistic survey of research pertaining to uncertainty quantification for machine learning models. Analysis of medical images with the summary and discussion on medical applications and the corresponding uncertainty evaluation protocols are presented, which focus on the specific challenges of uncertainty in medical image analysis. We also highlight some potential future research work at the end. Generally, this review aims to allow researchers from both clinical and technical backgrounds to gain a quick and yet in-depth understanding of the research in uncertainty quantification for medical image analysis machine learning models.

Deep evidential fusion with uncertainty quantification and contextual discounting for multimodal medical image segmentation

Single-modality medical images generally do not contain enough information to reach an accurate and reliable diagnosis. For this reason, physicians generally diagnose diseases based on multimodal medical images such as, e.g., PET/CT. The effective fusion of multimodal information is essential to reach a reliable decision and explain how the decision is made as well. In this paper, we propose a fusion framework for multimodal medical image segmentation based on deep learning and the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. In this framework, the reliability of each single modality image when segmenting different objects is taken into account by a contextual discounting operation. The discounted pieces of evidence from each modality are then combined by Dempster's rule to reach a final decision. Experimental results with a PET-CT dataset with lymphomas and a multi-MRI dataset with brain tumors show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in accuracy and reliability.

Deep Learning Approaches for Data Augmentation in Medical Imaging: A Review

Deep learning has become a popular tool for medical image analysis, but the limited availability of training data remains a major challenge, particularly in the medical field where data acquisition can be costly and subject to privacy regulations. Data augmentation techniques offer a solution by artificially increasing the number of training samples, but these techniques often produce limited and unconvincing results. To address this issue, a growing number of studies have proposed the use of deep generative models to generate more realistic and diverse data that conform to the true distribution of the data. In this review, we focus on three types of deep generative models for medical image augmentation: variational autoencoders, generative adversarial networks, and diffusion models. We provide an overview of the current state of the art in each of these models and discuss their potential for use in different downstream tasks in medical imaging, including classification, segmentation, and cross-modal translation. We also evaluate the strengths and limitations of each model and suggest directions for future research in this field. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive review about the use of deep generative models for medical image augmentation and to highlight the potential of these models for improving the performance of deep learning algorithms in medical image analysis.

Prediction of brain tumor recurrence location based on multi-modal fusion and nonlinear correlation learning

Brain tumor is one of the leading causes of cancer death. The high-grade brain tumors are easier to recurrent even after standard treatment. Therefore, developing a method to predict brain tumor recurrence location plays an important role in the treatment planning and it can potentially prolong patient's survival time. There is still little work to deal with this issue. In this paper, we present a deep learning-based brain tumor recurrence location prediction network. Since the dataset is usually small, we propose to use transfer learning to improve the prediction. We first train a multi-modal brain tumor segmentation network on the public dataset BraTS 2021. Then, the pre-trained encoder is transferred to our private dataset for extracting the rich semantic features. Following that, a multi-scale multi-channel feature fusion model and a nonlinear correlation learning module are developed to learn the effective features. The correlation between multi-channel features is modeled by a nonlinear equation. To measure the similarity between the distributions of original features of one modality and the estimated correlated features of another modality, we propose to use Kullback-Leibler divergence. Based on this divergence, a correlation loss function is designed to maximize the similarity between the two feature distributions. Finally, two decoders are constructed to jointly segment the present brain tumor and predict its future tumor recurrence location. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that can segment the present tumor and at the same time predict future tumor recurrence location, making the treatment planning more efficient and precise. The experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed method to predict the brain tumor recurrence location from the limited dataset.