Cited by 609Privacy-Preserving Technologies in DataBrain Tumor Detection and ClassificationMedical Image Segmentation Techniques

Multi-institutional Deep Learning Modeling Without Sharing Patient Data: A Feasibility Study on Brain Tumor Segmentation

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Sheller, Micah J., Reina, G. Anthony, Edwards, Brandon, Martin, Jason, Bakas, Spyridon·2019·Lecture Notes in Computer Science

Abstract

Deep learning models for semantic segmentation of images require large amounts of data. In the medical imaging domain, acquiring sufficient data is a significant challenge. Labeling medical image data requires expert knowledge. Collaboration between institutions could address this challenge, but sharing medical data to a centralized location faces various legal, privacy, technical, and data-ownership challenges, especially among international institutions. In this study, we introduce the first use of federated learning for multi-institutional collaboration, enabling deep learning modeling without sharing patient data. Our quantitative results demonstrate that the performance of federated semantic segmentation models (Dice=0.852) on multimodal brain scans is similar to that of models trained by sharing data (Dice=0.862). We compare federated learning with two alternative collaborative learning methods and find that they fail to match the performance of federated learning.

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Crossref · 10.1007/978-3-030-11723-8_9

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  • Medical data is particularly diverse, and inhomogeneous data distribution poses a challenge for federated learning algorithms and strategies, as many assume independently and identically distributed data; strategies such as FedAvg are prone to fail under these conditions, but recent results indicate that FL training is still feasible even if medical data is not uniformly distributed or includes a

    “Medical data is particularly diverse—not only because of the variety of modalities, dimensionality and characteristics in general, but even within a specific protocol due to factors such as acquisition differences, brand of the medical device or local demographics.”

    From The future of digital health with federated learning (2020) · cites this paper as [17]

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    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Models trained by federated learning can achieve performance levels comparable to ones trained on centrally hosted data sets and superior to models that only see isolated single-institutional data.

    “Recent research has shown that models trained by FL can achieve performance levels comparable to ones trained on centrally hosted data sets and superior to models that only see isolated single-institutional data16,17.”

    From The future of digital health with federated learning (2020) · cites this paper as [17]

    The Conclusions (page unavailable) report that the federated brain-tumor segmentation model achieved 99% of the performance of a data-sharing model, supporting the comparison with centralized training. The Experimental Results compare federated learning with other collaborative methods, not models trained solely on isolated single-institution data. The paper anticipates a benefit from adding another institution’s data but does not establish the claimed superiority over isolated models. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • The federated learning workflow used in the present study, based on an aggregation server, had almost identical performance to centralized learning for detecting glioblastoma sub-compartment boundaries.

    “Findings from these studies supported the superiority of the FL workflow used in the present study (i.e., based on an aggregation server10,14), which had almost identical performance to CL, for this use-case.”
  • Federated learning provides an alternative paradigm for accurate and generalizable machine learning by only sharing numerical model updates from decentralized data.

    “Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative paradigm for accurate and generalizable ML, by only sharing numerical model updates.”
  • FL has made e-health services more accessible by allowing machine learning modeling despite the absence of health data.

    “FL, for instance, has made e-health services more accessible by allowing machine learning (ML) modeling despite the absence of health data [10].”

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Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [12]Brendan McMahan H, Moore E, Ramage D, Hampson S, Agera y Arcas B: Communication-E cient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data. ArXiv e-prints, (2016)

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Authors
Sheller, M. J., Reina, G. A., Edwards, B., Martin, J., & Bakas, S.
Affiliations
  • Intel (United States) (US)
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
Corresponding author
  • Sheller, Micah J.
  • Bakas, Spyridon
Venue
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Published
2019
Volume
11383
Pages
92-104
ISSN
  • 0302-9743 (ISSN-L)
  • 1611-3349
OpenAlex
W2897230576
Cited by
609
References
23
Citations by year
2026: 73 · 2025: 97 · 2024: 83 · 2023: 98 · 2022: 113 · 2021: 77 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 1
FWCI
24.59
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Lecture notes in computer science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (1s10od023495-01)
  • National Cancer Institute (U24CA189523)
  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS042645)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Brain Tumor Detection and Classification
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Medical Image Segmentation Techniques
Keywords
federated learning, brain tumor segmentation, semantic segmentation, multi-institutional collaboration, data privacy, health data sharing, collaborative deep learning, data ownership

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