Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression follows a complex continuum from normal cognition (NC) through mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to dementia, yet most deep learning approaches oversimplify this into discrete classification tasks. This study introduces M$^3$AD, a novel multi-task multi-gate mixture of experts framework that jointly addresses diagnostic classification and cognitive transition modeling using structural MRI. We incorporate three key innovations: (1) an open-source T1-weighted sMRI preprocessing pipeline, (2) a unified learning framework capturing NC-MCI-AD transition patterns with demographic priors (age, gender, brain volume) for improved generalization, and (3) a customized multi-gate mixture of experts architecture enabling effective multi-task learning with structural MRI alone. The framework employs specialized expert networks for diagnosis-specific pathological patterns while shared experts model common structural features across the cognitive continuum. A two-stage training protocol combines SimMIM pretraining with multi-task fine-tuning for joint optimization. Comprehensive evaluation across six datasets comprising 12,037 T1-weighted sMRI scans demonstrates superior performance: 95.13% accuracy for three-class NC-MCI-AD classification and 99.15% for binary NC-AD classification, representing improvements of 4.69% and 0.55% over state-of-the-art approaches. The multi-task formulation simultaneously achieves 97.76% accuracy in predicting cognitive transition. Our framework outperforms existing methods using fewer modalities and offers a clinically practical solution for early intervention. Code: https://github.com/csyfjiang/M3AD.

Recently, large language models (LLMs) have driven promis ing progress in lossless image compression. However, di rectly adopting existing paradigms for medical images suf fers from an unsatisfactory trade-off between compression performance and efficiency. Moreover, existing LLM-based compressors often overlook the security of the compres sion process, which is critical in modern medical scenarios. To this end, we propose a novel joint lossless compression and steganography framework. Inspired by bit plane slicing (BPS), we find it feasible to securely embed privacy messages into medical images in an invisible manner. Based on this in sight, an adaptive modalities decomposition strategy is first devised to partition the entire image into two segments, pro viding global and local modalities for subsequent dual-path lossless compression. During this dual-path stage, we inno vatively propose a segmented message steganography algo rithm within the local modality path to ensure the security of the compression process. Coupled with the proposed anatom ical priors-based low-rank adaptation (A-LoRA) fine-tuning strategy, extensive experimental results demonstrate the su periority of our proposed method in terms of compression ra tios, efficiency, and security. The source code will be made publicly available.

Topological structures in image data, such as connected components and loops, play a crucial role in understanding image content (e.g., biomedical objects). % Despite remarkable successes of numerous image processing methods that rely on appearance information, these methods often lack sensitivity to topological structures when used in general deep learning (DL) frameworks. % In this paper, we introduce a new general approach, called TopoImages (for Topology Images), which computes a new representation of input images by encoding local topology of patches. % In TopoImages, we leverage persistent homology (PH) to encode geometric and topological features inherent in image patches. % Our main objective is to capture topological information in local patches of an input image into a vectorized form. % Specifically, we first compute persistence diagrams (PDs) of the patches, % and then vectorize and arrange these PDs into long vectors for pixels of the patches. % The resulting multi-channel image-form representation is called a TopoImage. % TopoImages offers a new perspective for data analysis. % To garner diverse and significant topological features in image data and ensure a more comprehensive and enriched representation, we further generate multiple TopoImages of the input image using various filtration functions, which we call multi-view TopoImages. % The multi-view TopoImages are fused with the input image for DL-based classification, with considerable improvement. % Our TopoImages approach is highly versatile and can be seamlessly integrated into common DL frameworks. Experiments on three public medical image classification datasets demonstrate noticeably improved accuracy over state-of-the-art methods.

In study, we aimed to dosimetrically evaluate the usability of a new generation autocontouring algorithm (DirectORGANS) that automatically identifies organs and contours them directly in the computed tomography (CT) simulator before creating prostate radiotherapy plans. The CT images of 10 patients were used in this study. The prostates, bladder, rectum, and femoral heads of 10 patients were automatically contoured based on DirectORGANS algorithm at the CT simulator. On the same CT image sets, the same target volumes and contours of organs at risk were manually contoured by an experienced physician using MRI images and used as a reference structure. The doses of manually delineated contours of the target volume and organs at risk and the doses of auto contours of the target volume and organs at risk were obtained from the dose volume histogram of the same plan. Conformity index (CI) and homogeneity index (HI) were calculated to evaluate the target volumes. In critical organ structures, V_60, V_65, V₇₀ for the rectum, V_65, V70, V75, and V₈₀ for the bladder, and maximum doses for femoral heads were evaluated. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for statistical comparison with statistical package SPSS (P < 0.05). Compared to the doses of the manual contours (MC) with auto contours (AC), there was no significant difference between the doses of the organs at risk. However, there were statistically significant differences between HI and CI values due to differences in prostate contouring (P < 0.05). The study showed that the need for clinicians to edit target volumes using MRI before treatment planning. However, it demonstrated that delineating organs at risk was used safely without the need for correction. DirectORGANS algorithm is suitable for use in RT planning to minimize differences between physicians and shorten the duration of this contouring step.

Early detection of lung cancer, which remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, is important for improved prognosis, and CT scanning is an important diagnostic modality. Lung cancer classification according to CT scan is challenging since the disease is characterized by very variable features. A hybrid deep architecture, ILN-TL-DM, is presented in this paper for precise classification of lung cancer from CT scan images. Initially, an Adaptive Gaussian filtering method is applied during pre-processing to eliminate noise and enhance the quality of the CT image. This is followed by an Improved Attention-based ResU-Net (P-ResU-Net) model being utilized during the segmentation process to accurately isolate the lung and tumor areas from the remaining image. During the process of feature extraction, various features are derived from the segmented images, such as Local Gabor Transitional Pattern (LGTrP), Pyramid of Histograms of Oriented Gradients (PHOG), deep features and improved entropy-based features, all intended to improve the representation of the tumor areas. Finally, classification exploits a hybrid deep learning architecture integrating an improved LeNet structure with Transfer Learning (ILN-TL) and a DeepMaxout (DM) structure. Both model outputs are finally merged with the help of a soft voting strategy, which results in the final classification result that separates cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. The strategy greatly enhances lung cancer detection's accuracy and strength, showcasing how combining sophisticated neural network structures with feature engineering and ensemble methods could be used to achieve better medical image classification. The ILN-TL-DM model consistently outperforms the conventional methods with greater accuracy (0.962), specificity (0.955) and NPV (0.964).

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ultrasound screening encounters challenges related to accuracy and the workload of radiologists. This retrospective, multicenter study assessed four artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced strategies using 21,934 liver ultrasound images from 11,960 patients to improve HCC ultrasound screening accuracy and reduce radiologist workload. UniMatch was used for lesion detection and LivNet for classification, trained on 17,913 images. Among the strategies tested, Strategy 4, which combined AI for initial detection and radiologist evaluation of negative cases in both detection and classification phases, outperformed others. It not only matched the high sensitivity of original algorithm (0.956 vs. 0.991) but also improved specificity (0.787 vs. 0.698), reduced radiologist workload by 54.5%, and decreased both recall and false positive rates. This approach demonstrates a successful model of human-AI collaboration, not only enhancing clinical outcomes but also mitigating unnecessary patient anxiety and system burden by minimizing recalls and false positives.

Accurate and early diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is crucial for timely interventions and treatment advancement. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), measuring brain blood-oxygen level changes over time, is a powerful AD-diagnosis tool. However, current fMRI-based AD diagnosis methods rely on noise-susceptible time-domain features and focus only on synchronous brain-region interactions in the same time phase, neglecting asynchronous ones. To overcome these issues, we propose Frequency-Time Fusion Graph Neural Network (FTF-GNN). It integrates frequency- and time-domain features for robust AD classification, considering both asynchronous and synchronous brain-region interactions. First, we construct a fully connected hypervariate graph, where nodes represent brain regions and their Blood Oxygen Level-Dependent (BOLD) values at a time series point. A Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) transforms these BOLD values from the spatial to the frequency domain for frequency-component analysis. Second, a Fourier-based Graph Neural Network (FourierGNN) processes the frequency features to capture asynchronous brain region connectivity patterns. Third, these features are converted back to the time domain and reshaped into a matrix where rows represent brain regions and columns represent their frequency-domain features at each time point. Each brain region then fuses its frequency-domain features with position encoding along the time series, preserving temporal and spatial information. Next, we build a brain-region network based on synchronous BOLD value associations and input the brain-region network and the fused features into a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) to capture synchronous brain region connectivity patterns. Finally, a fully connected network classifies the brain-region features. Experiments on the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset demonstrate the method's effectiveness: Our model achieves 91.26% accuracy and 96.79% AUC in AD versus Normal Control (NC) classification, showing promising performance. For early-stage detection, it attains state-of-the-art performance in distinguishing NC from Late Mild Cognitive Impairment (LMCI) with 87.16% accuracy and 93.22% AUC. Notably, in the challenging task of differentiating LMCI from AD, FTF-GNN achieves optimal performance (85.30% accuracy, 94.56% AUC), while also delivering competitive results (77.40% accuracy, 91.17% AUC) in distinguishing Early MCI (EMCI) from LMCI-the most clinically complex subtype classification. These results indicate that leveraging complementary frequency- and time-domain information, along with considering asynchronous and synchronous brain-region interactions, can address existing approach limitations, offering a robust neuroimaging-based diagnostic solution.

Vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) are the most prevalent skeletal manifestations of osteoporosis in cancer patients. Yet, they are frequently missed or not reported in routine clinical radiology, adversely impacting patient outcomes and quality of life. This study evaluates the diagnostic performance of a deep-learning (DL)-based application and its potential to reduce the miss rate of incidental VCFs in a high-risk cancer population. We retrospectively analysed thoraco-abdomino-pelvic (TAP) CT scans from 1556 patients with stage IV cancer collected consecutively over a 4-month period (September-December 2023) in a tertiary cancer center. A DL-based application flagged cases positive for VCFs, which were subsequently reviewed by two expert radiologists for validation. Additionally, grade 3 fractures identified by the application were independently assessed by two expert interventional radiologists to determine their eligibility for vertebroplasty. Of the 1556 cases, 501 were flagged as positive for VCF by the application, with 436 confirmed as true positives by expert review, yielding a positive predictive value (PPV) of 87%. Common causes of false positives included sclerotic vertebral metastases, scoliosis, and vertebrae misidentification. Notably, 83.5% (364/436) of true positive VCFs were absent from radiology reports, indicating a substantial non-report rate in routine practice. Ten grade 3 fractures were overlooked or not reported by radiologists. Among them, 9 were deemed suitable for vertebroplasty by expert interventional radiologists. This study underscores the potential of DL-based applications to improve the detection of VCFs. The analyzed tool can assist radiologists in detecting more incidental vertebral fractures in adult cancer patients, optimising timely treatment and reducing associated morbidity and economic burden. Moreover, it might enhance patient access to interventional treatments such as vertebroplasty. These findings highlight the transformative role that DL can play in optimising clinical management and outcomes for osteoporosis-related VCFs in cancer patients.

This review provides a comprehensive overview of current practices and recent advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of renal cancer. It introduces updates in histological classification and explains the imaging characteristics of each tumour based on these changes. The review highlights state-of-the-art imaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, positron emission tomography, and ultrasound, emphasising their crucial role in tumour characterisation and optimising treatment planning. Emerging technologies, such as radiomics and artificial intelligence, are also discussed for their transformative impact on enhancing diagnostic precision, prognostic prediction, and personalised patient management. Furthermore, the review explores current treatment options, including minimally invasive techniques such as cryoablation, radiofrequency ablation, and stereotactic body radiation therapy, as well as systemic therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors and targeted therapies.

Accurate segmentation of renal arteries from X-ray angiography videos is crucial for evaluating renal sympathetic denervation (RDN) procedures but remains challenging due to dynamic changes in contrast concentration and vessel morphology across frames. The purpose of this study is to propose TCA-Net, a deep learning model that improves segmentation consistency by leveraging local and global contextual information in angiography videos. Our approach utilizes a novel deep learning framework that incorporates two key modules: a local temporal window vessel enhancement module and a global vessel refinement module (GVR). The local module fuses multi-scale temporal-spatial features to improve the semantic representation of vessels in the current frame, while the GVR module integrates decoupled attention strategies (video-level and object-level attention) and gating mechanisms to refine global vessel information and eliminate redundancy. To further improve segmentation consistency, a temporal perception consistency loss function is introduced during training. We evaluated our model using 195 renal artery angiography sequences for development and tested it on an external dataset from 44 patients. The results demonstrate that TCA-Net achieves an F1-score of 0.8678 for segmenting renal arteries, outperforming existing state-of-the-art segmentation methods. We present TCA-Net, a deep learning-based model that significantly improves segmentation consistency for renal artery angiography videos. By effectively leveraging both local and global temporal contextual information, TCA-Net outperforms current methods and provides a reliable tool for assessing RDN procedures.