Ahmadyar Yashar, Kamali-Asl Alireza, Samimi Rezvan, Arabi Hossein, Zaidi Habib
Department of Medical Radiation Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
Division of Nuclear Medicine & Molecular Imaging, Geneva University Hospital, CH- 1211, Geneva, Switzerland.
Med Biol Eng Comput. 2025 Apr 15. doi: 10.1007/s11517-025-03358-2.
The aim of this study was to develop a deep learning method for analyzing CT images with varying doses and qualities, aiming to categorize lung lesions into nodules and non-nodules. This study utilized the lung nodule analysis 2016 challenge dataset. Different low-dose CT (LDCT) images, including 10%, 20%, 40%, and 60% levels, were generated from the full-dose CT (FDCT) images. Five different 3D convolutional networks were developed to classify lung nodules from LDCT and reference FDCT images. The models were evaluated using 400 nodule and 400 non-nodule samples. An ensemble model was also developed to achieve a generalizable model across different dose levels. The model achieved an accuracy of 97.0% for nodule classification on FDCT images. However, the model exhibited relatively poor performance (60% accuracy) on LDCT images, indicating that dedicated models should be developed for each low-dose level. Dedicated models for handling LDCT led to dramatic increases in the accuracy of nodule classification. The dedicated low-dose models achieved a nodule classification accuracy of 90.0%, 91.1%, 92.7%, and 93.8% for 10%, 20%, 40%, and 60% of FDCT images, respectively. The accuracy of the deep learning models decreased gradually by almost 7% as LDCT images proceeded from 100 to 10%. However, the ensemble model led to an accuracy of 95.0% when tested on a combination of various dose levels. We presented an ensemble 3D CNN classifier for lesion classification, utilizing both LDCT and FDCT images. This model is able to analyze a combination of CT images with different dose levels and image qualities.
本研究的目的是开发一种深度学习方法,用于分析不同剂量和质量的CT图像,旨在将肺部病变分为结节和非结节。本研究使用了2016年肺结节分析挑战数据集。从全剂量CT(FDCT)图像生成了不同的低剂量CT(LDCT)图像,包括10%、20%、40%和60%剂量水平。开发了五种不同的3D卷积网络,用于从LDCT和参考FDCT图像中分类肺结节。使用400个结节样本和400个非结节样本对模型进行评估。还开发了一个集成模型,以实现跨不同剂量水平的通用模型。该模型在FDCT图像上的结节分类准确率达到了97.0%。然而,该模型在LDCT图像上的表现相对较差(准确率为60%),这表明应该为每个低剂量水平开发专用模型。处理LDCT的专用模型使结节分类的准确率大幅提高。对于FDCT图像的10%、20%、40%和60%剂量水平,专用低剂量模型的结节分类准确率分别达到了90.0%、91.1%、92.7%和93.8%。随着LDCT图像从100%降至10%,深度学习模型的准确率逐渐下降了近7%。然而,当在各种剂量水平的组合上进行测试时,集成模型的准确率达到了95.0%。我们提出了一种用于病变分类的集成3D CNN分类器,同时利用了LDCT和FDCT图像。该模型能够分析不同剂量水平和图像质量的CT图像组合。