In this study, we attempted to identify the subtypes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with the help of anatomical alterations found in structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) data of the ASD brain and machine learning tools. Initially, the sMRI data was preprocessed using the FreeSurfer toolbox. Further, the brain regions were segmented into 148 regions of interest using the Destrieux atlas. Features such as volume, thickness, surface area, and mean curvature were extracted for each brain region. We performed principal component analysis independently on the volume, thickness, surface area, and mean curvature features and identified the top 10 features. Further, we applied k-means clustering on these top 10 features and validated the number of clusters using Elbow and Silhouette method. Our study identified two clusters in the dataset which significantly shows the existence of two subtypes in ASD. We identified the features such as volume of scaled lh_G_front middle, thickness of scaled rh_S_temporal transverse, area of scaled lh_S_temporal sup, and mean curvature of scaled lh_G_precentral as the significant features discriminating the two clusters with statistically significant p-value (p<0.05). Thus, our proposed method is effective for the identification of ASD subtypes and can also be useful for the screening of other similar neurological disorders.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is an important clinical imaging tool but inevitably introduces radiation exposure to patients and healthcare providers. Reducing the tracer injection dose and eliminating the CT acquisition for attenuation correction can reduce the overall radiation dose, but often results in PET with high noise and bias. Thus, it is desirable to develop 3D methods to translate the non-attenuation-corrected low-dose PET (NAC-LDPET) into attenuation-corrected standard-dose PET (AC-SDPET). Recently, diffusion models have emerged as a new state-of-the-art deep learning method for image-to-image translation, better than traditional CNN-based methods. However, due to the high computation cost and memory burden, it is largely limited to 2D applications. To address these challenges, we developed a novel 2.5D Multi-view Averaging Diffusion Model (MADM) for 3D image-to-image translation with application on NAC-LDPET to AC-SDPET translation. Specifically, MADM employs separate diffusion models for axial, coronal, and sagittal views, whose outputs are averaged in each sampling step to ensure the 3D generation quality from multiple views. To accelerate the 3D sampling process, we also proposed a strategy to use the CNN-based 3D generation as a prior for the diffusion model. Our experimental results on human patient studies suggested that MADM can generate high-quality 3D translation images, outperforming previous CNN-based and Diffusion-based baseline methods. The code is available at https://github.com/tianqic/MADM.

As ultrasound (US) is the most accurate tool for assessing the thyroid nodule (TN) risk of malignancy (RoM), international societies have published various Thyroid Imaging and Reporting Data Systems (TIRADSs). With the recent advent of artificial intelligence (AI), clinicians and researchers should ask themselves how AI could interpret the terminology of the TIRADSs and whether or not AIs agree in the risk assessment of TNs. The study aim was to analyze the interobserver agreement (IOA) between AIs in assessing the RoM of TNs across various TIRADSs categories using a cases series created combining TIRADSs descriptors. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude were compared. ACR-TIRADS, EU-TIRADS, and K-TIRADS, were employed to evaluate the AI assessment. Multiple written scenarios for the three TIRADS were created, the cases were evaluated by the three AIs, and their assessments were analyzed and compared. The IOA was estimated by comparing the kappa (κ) values. Ninety scenarios were created. With ACR-TIRADS the IOA analysis gave κ = 0.58 between ChatGPT and Gemini, 0.53 between ChatGPT and Claude, and 0.90 between Gemini and Claude. With EU-TIRADS it was observed κ value = 0.73 between ChatGPT and Gemini, 0.62 between ChatGPT and Claude, and 0.72 between Gemini and Claude. With K-TIRADS it was found κ = 0.88 between ChatGPT and Gemini, 0.70 between ChatGPT and Claude, and 0.61 between Gemini and Claude. This study found that there were non-negligible variability between the three AIs. Clinicians and patients should be aware of these new findings.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive cancer with limited biomarkers for predicting immunotherapy response. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, GPT-4o, and Gemini offer the potential for enhancing clinical decision-making through multimodal data analysis. However, their effectiveness in predicting immunotherapy response, especially compared to human experts, remains unclear. This study assessed the performance of GPT-4, GPT-4o, and Gemini in predicting immunotherapy response in unresectable HCC, compared to radiologists and oncologists of varying expertise. A retrospective analysis of 186 patients with unresectable HCC utilized multimodal data (clinical and CT images). LLMs were evaluated with zero-shot prompting and two strategies: the 'voting method' and the 'OR rule method' for improved sensitivity. Performance metrics included accuracy, sensitivity, area under the curve (AUC), and agreement across LLMs and physicians.GPT-4o, using the 'OR rule method,' achieved 65% accuracy and 47% sensitivity, comparable to intermediate physicians but lower than senior physicians (accuracy: 72%, p = 0.045; sensitivity: 70%, p < 0.0001). Gemini-GPT, combining GPT-4, GPT-4o, and Gemini, achieved an AUC of 0.69, similar to senior physicians (AUC: 0.72, p = 0.35), with 68% accuracy, outperforming junior and intermediate physicians while remaining comparable to senior physicians (p = 0.78). However, its sensitivity (58%) was lower than senior physicians (p = 0.0097). LLMs demonstrated higher inter-model agreement (κ = 0.59-0.70) than inter-physician agreement, especially among junior physicians (κ = 0.15). This study highlights the potential of LLMs, particularly Gemini-GPT, as valuable tools in predicting immunotherapy response for HCC.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive adult primary brain cancer, characterized by significant heterogeneity, posing challenges for patient management, treatment planning, and clinical trial stratification. We developed a highly reproducible, personalized prognostication, and clinical subgrouping system using machine learning (ML) on routine clinical data, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and molecular measures from 2838 demographically diverse patients across 22 institutions and 3 continents. Patients were stratified into favorable, intermediate, and poor prognostic subgroups (I, II, and III) using Kaplan-Meier analysis (Cox proportional model and hazard ratios [HR]). The ML model stratified patients into distinct prognostic subgroups with HRs between subgroups I-II and I-III of 1.62 (95% CI: 1.43-1.84, P < .001) and 3.48 (95% CI: 2.94-4.11, P < .001), respectively. Analysis of imaging features revealed several tumor properties contributing unique prognostic value, supporting the feasibility of a generalizable prognostic classification system in a diverse cohort. Our ML model demonstrates extensive reproducibility and online accessibility, utilizing routine imaging data rather than complex imaging protocols. This platform offers a unique approach to personalized patient management and clinical trial stratification in GBM.

We developed and validated a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based radiomics model for the classification of high-grade glioma (HGG) and determined the optimal machine learning (ML) approach. This retrospective analysis included 184 patients (59 grade III lesions and 125 grade IV lesions). Radiomics features were extracted from MRI with T1-weighted imaging (T1WI). The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) feature selection method and seven classification methods including logistic regression, XGBoost, Decision Tree, Random Forest (RF), Adaboost, Gradient Boosting Decision Tree, and Stacking fusion model were used to differentiate HGG. Performance was compared on AUC, sensitivity, accuracy, precision and specificity. In the non-fusion models, the best performance was achieved by using the XGBoost classifier, and using SMOTE to deal with the data imbalance to improve the performance of all the classifiers. The Stacking fusion model performed the best, with an AUC = 0.95 (sensitivity of 0.84; accuracy of 0.85; F1 score of 0.85). MRI-based quantitative radiomics features have good performance in identifying the classification of HGG. The XGBoost method outperforms the classifiers in the non-fusion model and the Stacking fusion model outperforms the non-fusion model.

Deep learning models hold significant promise for disease diagnosis but often lack transparency in their decision-making processes, limiting trust and hindering clinical adoption. This study introduces a novel multi-task learning framework to enhance the medical explainability of deep learning models for diagnosing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) using fundus images. The framework simultaneously performs AMD classification and lesion segmentation, allowing the model to support its diagnoses with AMD-associated lesions identified through segmentation. In addition, we perform an in-depth interpretability analysis of the model, proposing the Medical Explainability Index (MXI), a novel metric that quantifies the medical relevance of the generated heatmaps by comparing them with the model's lesion segmentation output. This metric provides a measurable basis to evaluate whether the model's decisions are grounded in clinically meaningful information. The proposed method was trained and evaluated on the Automatic Detection Challenge on Age-Related Macular Degeneration (ADAM) dataset. Experimental results demonstrate robust performance, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.96 for classification and a Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.59 for segmentation, outperforming single-task models. By offering interpretable and clinically relevant insights, our approach aims to foster greater trust in AI-driven disease diagnosis and facilitate its adoption in clinical practice.

Minimally invasive surgery involves entering the body through small incisions or natural orifices, using a medical endoscope for observation and clinical procedures. However, traditional endoscopic images often suffer from low texture and uneven illumination, which can negatively impact surgical and diagnostic outcomes. To address these challenges, many researchers have applied deep learning methods to enhance the processing of endoscopic images. This paper proposes a monocular medical endoscopic image depth estimation method based on a window-adaptive asymmetric dual-branch Siamese network. In this network, one branch focuses on processing global image information, while the other branch concentrates on local details. An improved lightweight Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) module is added to the final layer of each branch, dynamically adjusting the inter-channel weights through self-attention. The outputs from both branches are then integrated using a lightweight cross-attention feature fusion module, enabling cross-branch feature interaction and enhancing the overall feature representation capability of the network. Extensive ablation and comparative experiments were conducted on medical datasets (EAD2019, Hamlyn, M2caiSeg, UCL) and a non-medical dataset (NYUDepthV2), with both qualitative and quantitative results-measured in terms of RMSE, AbsRel, FLOPs and running time-demonstrating the superiority of the proposed model. Additionally, comparisons with CT images show good organ boundary matching capability, highlighting the potential of our method for clinical applications. The key code of this paper is available at: https://github.com/superchongcnn/AttenAdapt_DE .

Sparse-view CT reconstruction is a challenging ill-posed inverse problem, where insufficient projection data leads to degraded image quality with increased noise and artifacts. Recent deep learning approaches have shown promising results in CT reconstruction. However, existing methods often neglect projection data constraints and rely heavily on convolutional neural networks, resulting in limited feature extraction capabilities and inadequate adaptability. To address these limitations, we propose a Dual-domain deep Prior-guided Multi-scale fusion Attention (DPMA) model for sparse-view CT reconstruction, aiming to enhance reconstruction accuracy while ensuring data consistency and stability. First, we establish a residual regularization strategy that applies constraints on the difference between the prior image and target image, effectively integrating deep learning-based priors with model-based optimization. Second, we develop a multi-scale fusion attention mechanism that employs parallel pathways to simultaneously model global context, regional dependencies, and local details in a unified framework. Third, we incorporate a physics-informed consistency module based on range-null space decomposition to ensure adherence to projection data constraints. Experimental results demonstrate that DPMA achieves improved reconstruction quality compared to existing approaches, particularly in noise suppression, artifact reduction, and fine detail preservation.

Segmentation is one of the most significant steps in image processing. Segmenting an image is a technique that makes it possible to separate a digital image into various areas based on the different characteristics of pixels in the image. In particular, the segmentation of breast ultrasound images is widely used for cancer identification. As a result of image segmentation, it is possible to make early diagnoses of a diseases via medical images in a very effective way. Due to various ultrasound artifacts and noises, including speckle noise, low signal-to-noise ratio, and intensity heterogeneity, the process of accurately segmenting medical images, such as ultrasound images, is still a challenging task. In this paper, we present a new method to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of breast ultrasound image segmentation. More precisely, we propose a neural network (NN) based on U-Net and an encoder-decoder architecture. By taking U-Net as the basis, both the encoder and decoder parts are developed by combining U-Net with other deep neural networks (Res-Net and MultiResUNet) and introducing a new approach and block (Co-Block), which preserve as much as possible the low-level and the high-level features. The designed network is evaluated using the Breast Ultrasound Images (BUSI) Dataset. It consists of 780 images, and the images are categorized into three classes, which are normal, benign, and malignant. According to our extensive evaluations on a public breast ultrasound dataset, the designed network segments the breast lesions more accurately than other state-of-the-art deep learning methods. With only 8.88 M parameters, our network (CResU-Net) obtained 82.88%, 77.5%, 90.3%, and 98.4% in terms of Dice similarity coefficients (DSC), intersection over union (IoU), area under curve (AUC), and global accuracy (ACC), respectively, on the BUSI dataset.