Feature Learning Based on Visual Similarity Triplets in Medical Image Analysis: A Case Study of Emphysema in Chest CT Scans

Silas Nyboe Ørting, Jens Petersen, Veronika Cheplygina, Laura H. Thomsen, Mathilde M. W. Wille, Marleen De Bruijne

    Abstract

    Supervised feature learning using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can provide concise and disease relevant representations of medical images. However, training CNNs requires annotated image data. Annotating medical images can be a time-consuming task and even expert annotations are subject to substantial inter- and intra-rater variability. Assessing visual similarity of images instead of indicating specific pathologies or estimating disease severity could allow non-experts to participate, help uncover new patterns, and possibly reduce rater variability. We consider the task of assessing emphysema extent in chest CT scans. We derive visual similarity triplets from visually assessed emphysema extent and learn a low dimensional embedding using CNNs. We evaluate the networks on 973 images, and show that the CNNs can learn disease relevant feature representations from derived similarity triplets. To our knowledge this is the first medical image application where similarity triplets has been used to learn a feature representation that can be used for embedding unseen test images.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationIntravascular Imaging and Computer Assisted Stenting and Large-Scale Annotation of Biomedical Data and Expert Label Synthesis : 7th Joint International Workshop, CVII-STENT 2018 and Third International Workshop, LABELS 2018 Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2018 Granada, Spain, September 16, 2018 Proceedings
    EditorsDanail Stoyanov, Zeike Taylor, Simone Balocco, Raphael Sznitman
    PublisherSpringer
    Publication date2018
    Pages140-149
    Article numberChapter 16
    ISBN (Print)978-3-030-01363-9
    ISBN (Electronic) 978-3-030-01364-6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018
    Event7th Joint International Workshop, CVII-STENT 2018
    and Third International Workshop, LABELS 2018
    - Granada, Spain
    Duration: 18 Sept 2018 → …

    Workshop

    Workshop7th Joint International Workshop, CVII-STENT 2018
    and Third International Workshop, LABELS 2018
    Country/TerritorySpain
    CityGranada
    Period18/09/2018 → …
    SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
    Volume11043
    ISSN0302-9743

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