Cited by 4,968Medical Image Segmentation TechniquesArtificial Intelligence in Healthcare and EducationAdvanced Neural Network Applications

Deep learning in medical image analysis

Open access
Shen, Dinggang, Wu, Guorong, Suk, Heung-Il·2017·Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

This review covers computer-assisted analysis of images in the field of medical imaging. Recent advances in machine learning, especially with regard to deep learning, are helping to identify, classify, and quantify patterns in medical images. At the core of these advances is the ability to exploit hierarchical feature representations learned solely from data, instead of features designed by hand according to domain-specific knowledge. Deep learning is rapidly becoming the state of the art, leading to enhanced performance in various medical applications. We introduce the fundamentals of deep learning methods and review their successes in image registration, detection of anatomical and cellular structures, tissue segmentation, computer-aided disease diagnosis and prognosis, and so on. We conclude by discussing research issues and suggesting future directions for further improvement.

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Crossref · 10.1146/annurev-bioeng-071516-044442

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122 of 122 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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  • Model generalizability across diverse populations and variability in imaging quality due to differences in medical equipment and patient demographics are notable challenges for ML-based PAS diagnosis.

    “Despite these promising results, notable challenges included model generalizability across diverse populations and variability in imaging quality due to differences in medical equipment and patient demographics.”

    From Machine Learning in Maternity: Early Diagnosis of Placenta Accreta Spectrum (2026) · cites this paper as [15]

    The Data availability section (page unavailable) identifies the need for more generalizable image features and for methods that handle different scanning protocols. Section 3.1 (page unavailable) also describes methods that do not transfer between images acquired at different MRI field strengths. The paper does not establish these challenges specifically for PAS diagnosis or attribute imaging-quality variation to patient demographics. (LLM, conf=0.84)

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  • This advancement has found extensive application in the fields of brain, cardiac, eye, and cancer diseases.

    “This advancement has found extensive application in the fields of brain, cardiac, eye, and cancer diseases [4].”

    From Challenges in AI-driven Biomedical Multimodal Data Fusion and Analysis (2025) · cites this paper as [4]

    Sections 3.4 and 3.5 describe deep-learning applications involving brain disorders and cancer-related imaging. The copy does not establish extensive application to eye or cardiac diseases; its mention of cardiac sections in §3.2.1 concerns identifying body parts in images, not diagnosing cardiac disease. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Deep learning is the current state of the art in medical image analysis.

    “which is the current state of the art in medical image analysis (Litjens et al. (2017); Meijering (2020); Shen et al. (2017))”
  • Deep learning methods in medical image analysis extract complementary tissue structure or morphological features of images to aid in lesion detection, segmentation, and computer-assisted diagnosis.

    “In medical image analysis, deep learning methods have been broadly utilized to extract complementary tissue structure or morphological features of images to aid in lesion detection, segmentation, and computer-assisted diagnosis [4].”
  • Low-quality images due to inadequate equipment or operator expertise can lead to reduced diagnostic accuracy of ML programs for PAS.

    “ML programs must contend with varying image quality across different healthcare settings; low-quality images due to inadequate equipment or operator expertise can lead to reduced diagnostic accuracy [12,15].”

    From Machine Learning in Maternity: Early Diagnosis of Placenta Accreta Spectrum (2026) · cites this paper as [15]

    The Data availability section discusses the challenge of handling images acquired with different scanning protocols, but does not address low-quality images caused by inadequate equipment or operator expertise. Searches for those causes and for image quality affecting diagnostic performance found no passage supporting the attributed claim; no page number was available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.70)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. [49]49. Chen H, Dou Q, Wang X, Qin J, Heng P. 2016. Mitosis detection in breast cancer histological images via deep cascaded networks. In Proceedings of the 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 1160-66. Palo Alto, CA: AAAI
  2. [71]71. Smolensky P. 1986. Information processing in dynamical systems: foundations of harmony theory. In Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. pp. 194-281. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  3. [78]78. Maas AL, Hannun AY, Ng AY. 2013. Rectifier nonlinearities improve neural network acoustic models. In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, Workshop on Deep Learning for Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, p. 192. New York: ACM
  4. [113]113. Lee CY, Xie S, Gallagher PW, Zhang Z, Tu Z. 2015. Deeply-supervised nets. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, pp. 562-70. Brookline, MA: Microtome 118.

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Authors
Shen, D., Wu, G., & Suk, H.-I.
Affiliations
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
  • Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599;
  • Korea University (KR)
Venue
Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering
Published
2017-06-21
Volume
19
Issue
1
Pages
221-248
ISSN
  • 1523-9829 (ISSN-L)
  • 1545-4274
OpenAlex
W2533800772
Cited by
4,968
References
122
Citations by year
2026: 503 · 2025: 611 · 2024: 604 · 2023: 629 · 2022: 647 · 2021: 668 · 2020: 568 · 2019: 434 · 2018: 246 · 2017: 55 · 2016: 2 · 2014: 1
FWCI
19.85
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Research Foundation
  • Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning
  • National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015R1C1A1A01052216)
  • National Institutes of Health
  • Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion
  • National Institute on Aging (RF1AG053867, R01AG042599, R01AG041721, R01AG049371, K01AG049089)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH100217, R21MH108914)
  • National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (R01EB008374, R01EB009634, R01EB006733)
  • National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (R01DE022676)
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
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Advanced Neural Network Applications
Keywords
deep learning, medical image analysis, image registration, anatomical structure detection, tissue segmentation, computer-aided diagnosis, hierarchical feature representation
MeSH terms
Unsupervised Machine Learning, Algorithms, Diagnostic Imaging, Image Enhancement, Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted, Pattern Recognition, Automated, Neural Networks, Computer

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