Fracture Detection in Pediatric Wrist Trauma X-ray Images Using YOLOv8 Algorithm

Hospital emergency departments frequently receive lots of bone fracture cases, with pediatric wrist trauma fracture accounting for the majority of them. Before pediatric surgeons perform surgery, they need to ask patients how the fracture occurred and analyze the fracture situation by interpreting X-ray images. The interpretation of X-ray images often requires a combination of techniques from radiologists and surgeons, which requires time-consuming specialized training. With the rise of deep learning in the field of computer vision, network models applying for fracture detection has become an important research topic. In this paper, YOLOv8 algorithm is used to train models on the GRAZPEDWRI-DX dataset, which includes X-ray images from 6,091 pediatric patients with wrist trauma. The experimental results show that YOLOv8 algorithm models have different advantages for different model sizes, with YOLOv8l model achieving the highest mean average precision (mAP 50) of 63.6%, and YOLOv8n model achieving the inference time of 67.4ms per X-ray image on one single CPU with low computing power. This work demonstrates that YOLOv8 algorithm has good generalizability and creates the "Fracture Detection Using YOLOv8 App" to assist surgeons in interpreting fractures in X-ray images, reducing the probability of error, and providing more useful information for fracture surgery. Our implementation code is released at https://github.com/RuiyangJu/Bone_Fracture_Detection_YOLOv8.