Cited by 2,058Medical Image Segmentation TechniquesArtificial Intelligence in Healthcare and EducationAdvanced MRI Techniques and Applications

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 289 of the 289 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 3 of the 129 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

An overview of deep learning in medical imaging focusing on MRI

Open access
Lundervold, Alexander Selvikvåg, Lundervold, Arvid·2019·Zeitschrift für Medizinische Physik

Abstract

What has happened in machine learning lately, and what does it mean for the future of medical image analysis? Machine learning has witnessed a tremendous amount of attention over the last few years. The current boom started around 2009 when so-called deep artificial neural networks began outperforming other established models on a number of important benchmarks. Deep neural networks are now the state-of-the-art machine learning models across a variety of areas, from image analysis to natural language processing, and widely deployed in academia and industry. These developments have a huge potential for medical imaging technology, medical data analysis, medical diagnostics and healthcare in general, slowly being realized. We provide a short overview of recent advances and some associated challenges in machine learning applied to medical image processing and image analysis. As this has become a very broad and fast expanding field we will not survey the entire landscape of applications, but put particular focus on deep learning in MRI. Our aim is threefold: (i) give a brief introduction to deep learning with pointers to core references; (ii) indicate how deep learning has been applied to the entire MRI processing chain, from acquisition to image retrieval, from segmentation to disease prediction; (iii) provide a starting point for people interested in experimenting and perhaps contributing to the field of deep learning for medical imaging by pointing out good educational resources, state-of-the-art open-source code, and interesting sources of data and problems related medical imaging.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This narrative review surveys deep learning in medical imaging with a focus on MRI, covering the MRI processing chain from acquisition and reconstruction to segmentation, diagnosis, and image retrieval. It argues that deep learning is already state-of-the-art in many imaging tasks but faces major challenges in data access, interpretability, workflow integration, and regulation.

Key findings

  • Deep learning, especially CNNs, has become the de facto standard for many computer vision and medical image analysis tasks, and is being applied across the entire MRI workflow: acquisition/reconstruction, QSM and MR fingerprinting, denoising, super-resolution, synthesis, registration, segmentation, diagnosis/prediction, and content-based image retrieval.
  • In MR fingerprinting, Cohen et al.’s DRONE network reconstructed in 10 to 70 ms per slice, reported as 300 to 5000 times faster than conventional dictionary matching; Hoppe et al. reported matching one time series about 100 times faster than the conventional method.
  • QSMnet was trained on 60 scans from 12 healthy volunteers; DeepResolve used thin knee slices from 124 patients for training and 17 for testing, with 10 s inference time per 3D 344 × 344 × 160 volume.
  • Early deep learning for medical CBIR was disappointing: Sklan et al. reported a true positive rate of 20% on an independent test set of 2100 labeled images, though the paper states medical CBIR is now dominated by deep learning algorithms.

Methods

  • Narrative overview/review, not a systematic review or meta-analysis; the authors state three aims: introduce deep learning, indicate applications across the MRI processing chain, and point to educational resources, open-source code, data, and problems.
  • No primary data collection or new experiments; the paper synthesizes cited literature and examples across MRI acquisition, reconstruction, quantitative parameter mapping, image restoration, super-resolution, synthesis, registration, segmentation, diagnosis/prediction, and CBIR.
  • Includes short lists/tables of openly available code, medical imaging datasets/repositories, and competitions.

Limitations

  • The paper states it does not survey the entire landscape and is not comprehensive; it focuses particularly on MRI and selected organs/applications.
  • The paper states general and domain-specific challenges: lack of mathematical/theoretical underpinnings, difficulty interpreting “black box” predictions, data access/privacy issues, deep networks’ large training-data requirements, 3D CNN constraints, workflow integration, and regulatory/ethical/legal hurdles.
  • Evident from the text: as a narrative review without a systematic search protocol or quantitative synthesis, it cannot estimate effect sizes, prevalence, or comparative performance across the field.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.zemedi.2018.11.002

Cites

289 of 289 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

54 Not checked yet · 23 Own interpretation · 11 No basis given · 7 Sources not found · 1 Partly supported · accuracy not yet measured

Verify all 103 references — free account

Show all 23 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 64
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 33
73 of 73
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Healthcare providers generate and capture enormous amounts of data containing extremely valuable signals and information, at a pace far surpassing what 'traditional' methods of analysis can process.

    “Healthcare providers generate and capture enormous amounts of data containing extremely valuable signals and information, at a pace far surpassing what 'traditional' methods of analysis can process.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The use of machine learning in general and deep learning in particular within healthcare is still in its infancy.

    “The use of machine learning in general and deep learning in particular within healthcare is still in its infancy”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Medical imaging datasets are often imbalanced, with few pathological findings, limiting the training of deep learning models.

    “This approach is highly interesting as medical imaging datasets are often imbalanced, with few pathological findings, limiting the training of deep learning models.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Medical images are often three-dimensional.

    “One issue is that medical images are often three-dimensional, and three-dimensional convolutional neural networks are as well-developed as their 2D counterparts.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Three-dimensional convolutional neural networks are as well-developed as their 2D counterparts.

    “One issue is that medical images are often three-dimensional, and three-dimensional convolutional neural networks are as well-developed as their 2D counterparts.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Labeled training data is typically both expensive and difficult to produce.

    “These are very inefficient models, requiring large number of training samples before they can produce anything remotely useful, and labeled training data is typically both expensive and difficult to produce.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Privacy and data protection is often a requirement when dealing with medical data.

    “As privacy and data protection is often a requirement when dealing with medical data, new techniques for training models without exposing the underlying training data to the user of the model are necessary.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The training data has to be representative of the data the network will meet in the future.

    “In addition, the training data has to be representative of the data the network will meet in the future.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The high-quality images one typically works with in research differ from the messiness of the real clinical world.

    “Considering the large difference between the high-quality images one typically work with when doing research and the messiness of the real, clinical world, this can be a major obstacle when putting deep learning systems into production.”
9 of 9

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Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

4 of 4

Citations

Cites

Show all 289 references

Research works printed but not linked: 28

  1. Shickel, 2017, Deep EHR: a survey of recent advances in deep learning techniques for electronic health record (EHR) analysis, IEEE J Biomed Health Inform
  2. Poplin, 2018, Prediction of cardiovascular risk factors from retinal fundus photographs via deep learning, Nat Biomed Eng, 2, 158, 10.1038/s41551-018-0195-0 · DOI · Paper page
  3. Cauchy, 1847, Méthode générale pour la résolution des systemes déquations simultanées, C R Sci Paris, 25, 536
  4. Srivastava, 2014, Dropout: a simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting, J Mach Learn Res, 15, 1929
  5. Zheng, 2018, Pairwise domain adaptation module for CNN-based 2-D/3-D registration, J Med Imaging (Bellingham, Wash.), 5, 021204
  6. Savadjiev, 2018, Demystification of AI-driven medical image interpretation: past, present and future, Eur Radiol
  7. Qin, 2018, Convolutional recurrent neural networks for dynamic MR image reconstruction, IEEE Trans Med Imaging
  8. Chen, 2018, Variable-density single-shot fast Spin-Echo MRI with deep learning reconstruction by using variational networks, Radiology, 180445
  9. Knoll, 2018, Assessment of the generalization of learned image reconstruction and the potential for transfer learning, Magn Reson Med
  10. Mardani, 2018, Deep generative adversarial neural networks for compressive sensing (GANCS) MRI, IEEE Trans Med Imaging
  11. Rasmussen, 2018, DeepQSM-using deep learning to solve the dipole inversion for MRI susceptibility mapping, Biorxiv, 278036
  12. Aggarwal, 2018, Modl: model based deep learning architecture for inverse problems, IEEE Trans Med Imaging
  13. Li H, Schwab J, Antholzer S, Haltmeier M. Nett: solving inverse problems with deep neural networks, arXiv:1803.00092 (2018). · arXiv
  14. Hoppe, 2017, Deep learning for magnetic resonance fingerprinting: a new approach for predicting quantitative parameter values from time series, Stud Health Technol Inform, 243, 202
  15. Vincent, 2010, Stacked denoising autoencoders: learning useful representations in a deep network with a local denoising criterion, J Mach Learn Res (JMLR), 11, 3371
  16. Hong Y, Hwang U, Yoo J, Yoon S. How generative adversarial networks and their variants work: an overview of GAN, arXiv:1711.05914v7 (2017). · arXiv
  17. Nie, 2017, Medical image synthesis with context-aware generative adversarial networks, Medical image computing and computer-assisted intervention: MICCAI, 417
  18. Spuhler, 2018, Synthesis of patient-specific transmission image for PET attenuation correction for PET/MR imaging of the brain using a convolutional neural network, J Nucl Med
  19. Torrado-Carvajal, 2018, Dixon-VIBE deep learning (DIVIDE) pseudo-CT synthesis for pelvis PET/MR attenuation correction, J Nucl Med
  20. Bernal J, Kushibar K, Asfaw DS, Valverde S, Oliver A, Mart R, et al. Deep convolutional neural networks for brain image analysis on magnetic resonance imaging: a review, arXiv:1712.03747v3 (2017). · arXiv
  21. Bernal, 2018, Deep convolutional neural networks for brain image analysis on magnetic resonance imaging: a review, Artif Intell Med
  22. Pizarro, 2018, Using deep learning algorithms to automatically identify the brain MRI contrast: implications for managing large databases, Neuroinformatics
  23. Hoseini, 2018, Adaptahead optimization algorithm for learning deep CNN applied to MRI segmentation, J Digit Imaging
  24. Shehata, 2018, Computer-aided diagnostic system for early detection of acute renal transplant rejection using diffusion-weighted MRI, IEEE Trans Bio-med Eng
  25. Sklan, 2015, Toward content based image retrieval with deep convolutional neural networks, Proc SPIE, 9417
  26. Ronneberger, 2015, U-net: Convolutional networks for biomedical image segmentation, vol. 9351, 234
  27. Montavon, 2017, Methods for interpreting and understanding deep neural networks, Digit Signal Process
  28. Hohman, 2018, Visual analytics in deep learning: an interrogative survey for the next frontiers, IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph

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Metadata

Authors
Lundervold, A. S., & Lundervold, A.
Affiliations
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (NO)
Corresponding author
Lundervold, Alexander Selvikvåg
Venue
Zeitschrift für Medizinische Physik
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-05
Volume
29
Issue
2
Pages
102-127
ISSN
0939-3889 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2900954917
Cited by
2,058
References
289
Citations by year
2026: 189 · 2025: 291 · 2024: 283 · 2023: 286 · 2022: 368 · 2021: 399 · 2020: 196 · 2019: 44
FWCI
19.06
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Zeitschrift für Medizinische Physik (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
Bergens Forskningsstiftelse
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Medical Image Segmentation Techniques
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications
Keywords
deep learning, medical image analysis, magnetic resonance imaging, deep neural network, MRI segmentation, disease prediction, medical image retrieval, open-source code
MeSH terms
Deep Learning, Animals, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging

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