Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a leading cause of disability globally. Early and accurate diagnosis is paramount in preventing its progression and improving patients' quality of life. However, the inconsistency in radiologists' expertise and the onset of visual fatigue during prolonged image analysis often compromise diagnostic accuracy, highlighting the need for automated diagnostic solutions. In this study, we present an advanced deep learning model, OA-HybridCNN (OHC), which integrates ResNet and DenseNet architectures. This integration effectively addresses the gradient vanishing issue in DenseNet and augments prediction accuracy. To evaluate its performance, we conducted a thorough comparison with other deep learning models using five-fold cross-validation and external tests. The OHC model outperformed its counterparts across all performance metrics. In external testing, OHC exhibited an accuracy of 91.77%, precision of 92.34%, and recall of 91.36%. During the five-fold cross-validation, its average AUC and ACC were 86.34% and 87.42%, respectively. Deep learning, particularly exemplified by the OHC model, has greatly improved the efficiency and accuracy of KOA imaging diagnosis. The adoption of such technologies not only alleviates the burden on radiologists but also significantly enhances diagnostic precision.

This study evaluates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) assistance on the diagnostic performance of radiologists with varying levels of experience in interpreting mammograms in a Malaysian tertiary referral center, particularly in women with dense breasts. A retrospective study including 434 digital mammograms interpreted by two general radiologists (12 and 6 years of experience) and two trainees (2 years of experience). Diagnostic performance was assessed with and without AI assistance (Lunit INSIGHT MMG), using sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Inter-reader agreement was measured using kappa statistics. AI assistance significantly improved the diagnostic performance of all reader groups across all metrics (p < 0.05). The senior radiologist consistently achieved the highest sensitivity (86.5% without AI, 88.0% with AI) and specificity (60.5% without AI, 59.2% with AI). The junior radiologist demonstrated the highest PPV (56.9% without AI, 74.6% with AI) and NPV (90.3% without AI, 92.2% with AI). The trainees showed the lowest performance, but AI significantly enhanced their accuracy. AI assistance was particularly beneficial in interpreting mammograms of women with dense breasts. AI assistance significantly enhances the diagnostic accuracy and consistency of radiologists in mammogram interpretation, with notable benefits for less experienced readers. These findings support the integration of AI into clinical practice, particularly in resource-limited settings where access to specialized breast radiologists is constrained.

The locus coeruleus (LC) is linked to the development and pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Magnetic resonance imaging-based LC features have shown potential to assess LC integrity in vivo. We present a deep learning-based LC segmentation and feature extraction method called Ensemble-based Locus Coeruleus Segmentation Network (ELSI-Net) and apply it to healthy aging and AD dementia datasets. Agreement to expert raters and previously published LC atlases were assessed. We aimed to reproduce previously reported differences in LC integrity in aging and AD dementia and correlate extracted features to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of AD pathology. ELSI-Net demonstrated high agreement to expert raters and published atlases. Previously reported group differences in LC integrity were detected and correlations to CSF biomarkers were found. Although we found excellent performance, further evaluations on more diverse datasets from clinical cohorts are required for a conclusive assessment of ELSI-Net's general applicability. We provide a thorough evaluation of a fully automatic locus coeruleus (LC) segmentation method termed Ensemble-based Locus Coeruleus Segmentation Network (ELSI-Net) in aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia.ELSI-Net outperforms previous work and shows high agreement with manual ratings and previously published LC atlases.ELSI-Net replicates previously shown LC group differences in aging and AD.ELSI-Net's LC mask volume correlates with cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of AD pathology.

Prostate cancer is a common malignancy in men, and accurately distinguishing between benign and malignant nodules at an early stage is crucial for optimizing treatment. Multimodal imaging (such as ADC and T2) plays an important role in the diagnosis of prostate cancer, but effectively combining these imaging features for accurate classification remains a challenge. This retrospective study included MRI data from 199 prostate cancer patients. Radiomic features from both the tumor and peritumoral regions were extracted, and a random forest model was used to select the most contributive features for classification. Three machine learning models-Random Forest, XGBoost, and Extra Trees-were then constructed and trained on four different feature combinations (tumor ADC, tumor T2, tumor ADC+T2, and tumor + peritumoral ADC+T2). The model incorporating multimodal imaging features and peritumoral characteristics showed superior classification performance. The Extra Trees model outperformed the others across all feature combinations, particularly in the tumor + peritumoral ADC+T2 group, where the AUC reached 0.729. The AUC values for the other combinations also exceeded 0.65. While the Random Forest and XGBoost models performed slightly lower, they still demonstrated strong classification abilities, with AUCs ranging from 0.63 to 0.72. SHAP analysis revealed that key features, such as tumor texture and peritumoral gray-level features, significantly contributed to the model's classification decisions. The combination of multimodal imaging data with peritumoral features moderately improved the accuracy of prostate cancer classification. This model provides a non-invasive and effective diagnostic tool for clinical use and supports future personalized treatment decisions.

Early and accurate detection of COVID-19 and pneumonia through medical imaging is critical for effective patient management. This study aims to develop a robust framework that integrates synthetic image augmentation with advanced deep learning (DL) models to address dataset imbalance, improve diagnostic accuracy, and enhance trust in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven diagnoses through Explainable AI (XAI) techniques. The proposed framework benchmarks state-of-the-art models (InceptionV3, DenseNet, ResNet) for initial performance evaluation. Synthetic images are generated using Feature Interpolation through Linear Mapping and principal component analysis to enrich dataset diversity and balance class distribution. YOLOv8 and InceptionV3 models, fine-tuned via transfer learning, are trained on the augmented dataset. Grad-CAM is used for model explainability, while large language models (LLMs) support visualization analysis to enhance interpretability. YOLOv8 achieved superior performance with 97% accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, outperforming benchmark models. Synthetic data generation effectively reduced class imbalance and improved recall for underrepresented classes. Comparative analysis demonstrated significant advancements over existing methodologies. XAI visualizations (Grad-CAM heatmaps) highlighted anatomically plausible focus areas aligned with clinical markers of COVID-19 and pneumonia, thereby validating the model's decision-making process. The integration of synthetic data generation, advanced DL, and XAI significantly enhances the detection of COVID-19 and pneumonia while fostering trust in AI systems. YOLOv8's high accuracy, coupled with interpretable Grad-CAM visualizations and LLM-driven analysis, promotes transparency crucial for clinical adoption. Future research will focus on developing a clinically viable, human-in-the-loop diagnostic workflow, further optimizing performance through the integration of transformer-based language models to improve interpretability and decision-making.

In recent times, appropriate diagnosis of brain tumour is a crucial task in medical system. Therefore, identification of a potential brain tumour is challenging owing to the complex behaviour and structure of the human brain. To address this issue, a deep learning-driven framework consisting of four pre-trained models viz DenseNet169, VGG-19, Xception, and EfficientNetV2B2 is developed to classify potential brain tumours from medical resonance images. At first, the deep learning models are trained and fine-tuned on the training dataset, obtained validation scores of trained models are considered as model-wise weights. Then, trained models are subsequently evaluated on the test dataset to generate model-specific predictions. In the weight-aware decision module, the class-bucket of a probable output class is updated with the weights of deep models when their predictions match the class. Finally, the bucket with the highest aggregated value is selected as the final output class for the input image. A novel weight-aware decision mechanism is a key feature of this framework, which effectively deals tie situations in multi-class classification compared to conventional majority-based techniques. The developed framework has obtained promising results of 98.7%, 97.52%, and 94.94% accuracy on three different datasets. The entire framework is seamlessly integrated into an end-to-end web-application for user convenience. The source code, dataset and other particulars are publicly released at https://github.com/SaiSanthosh1508/Brain-Tumour-Image-classification-app [Rishik Sai Santhosh, "Brain Tumour Image Classification Application," https://github.com/SaiSanthosh1508/Brain-Tumour-Image-classification-app] for academic, research and other non-commercial usage.

Diagnosis and treatment of endometrial diseases are crucial for women's health. Over the past decade, ultrasound has emerged as a non-invasive, safe, and cost-effective imaging tool, significantly contributing to endometrial disease diagnosis and generating extensive datasets. The introduction of artificial intelligence has enabled the application of machine learning and deep learning to extract valuable information from these datasets, enhancing ultrasound diagnostic capabilities. This paper reviews the progress of artificial intelligence in ultrasound image analysis for endometrial diseases, focusing on applications in diagnosis, decision support, and prognosis analysis. We also summarize current research challenges and propose potential solutions and future directions to advance ultrasound artificial intelligence technology in endometrial disease diagnosis, ultimately improving women's health through digital tools.

Artificial intelligence (AI) methods have established themselves in cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) as automated quantification tools for ventricular volumes, function, and myocardial tissue characterization. Quality assurance approaches focus on measuring and controlling AI-expert differences but there is a need for tools that better communicate reliability and agreement. This study introduces the Verity plot, a novel statistical visualization that communicates the reliability of quantitative parameters (QP) with clear agreement criteria and descriptive statistics. Tolerance ranges for the acceptability of the bias and variance of AI-expert differences were derived from intra- and interreader evaluations. AI-expert agreement was defined by bias confidence and variance tolerance intervals being within bias and variance tolerance ranges. A reliability plot was designed to communicate this statistical test for agreement. Verity plots merge reliability plots with density and a scatter plot to illustrate AI-expert differences. Their utility was compared against Correlation, Box and Bland-Altman plots. Bias and variance tolerance ranges were established for volume, function, and myocardial tissue characterization QPs. Verity plots provided insights into statstistcal properties, outlier detection, and parametric test assumptions, outperforming Correlation, Box and Bland-Altman plots. Additionally, they offered a framework for determining the acceptability of AI-expert bias and variance. Verity plots offer markers for bias, variance, trends and outliers, in addition to deciding AI quantification acceptability. The plots were successfully applied to various AI methods in CMR and decisively communicated AI-expert agreement.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has demonstrated human-level capabilities in many prediction tasks, collaboration between humans and machines is crucial in mission-critical applications, especially in the healthcare sector. An important factor that enables successful human-AI collaboration is the user interface (UI). This paper evaluated the UI of BiTNet, an intelligent assisting tool for human biliary tract diagnosis via ultrasound images. We evaluated the UI of the assisting tool with 11 healthcare professionals through two main research questions: 1) did the assisting tool help improve the diagnosis performance of the healthcare professionals who use the tool? and 2) how did different UI elements of the assisting tool influence the users' decisions? To analyze the impacts of different UI elements without multiple rounds of experiments, we propose the novel AISIM strategy. We demonstrated that our proposed strategy, AISIM, can be used to analyze the influence of different elements in the user interface in one go. Our main findings show that the assisting tool improved the diagnostic performance of healthcare professionals from different levels of experience (OR  = 3.326, p-value <10-15). In addition, high AI prediction confidence and correct AI attention area provided higher than twice the odds that the users would follow the AI suggestion. Finally, the interview results agreed with the experimental result that BiTNet boosted the users' confidence when they were assigned to diagnose abnormality in the biliary tract from the ultrasound images.

Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) leads to high mortality, especially amongst individuals with HIV. Predicting the incidence of disease-related complications is challenging, for which purpose the value of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has not been well investigated. We used a convolutional neural network (CNN) to explore the complementary contribution of brain MRI to the conventional prognostic determinants. We pooled data from two randomised control trials of HIV-positive and HIV-negative adults with clinical TBM in Vietnam to predict the occurrence of death or new neurological complications in the first two months after the subject's first MRI session. We developed and compared three models: a logistic regression with clinical, demographic and laboratory data as reference, a CNN that utilised only T1-weighted MRI volumes, and a model that fused all available information. All models were fine-tuned using two repetitions of 5-fold cross-validation. The final evaluation was based on a random 70/30 training/test split, stratified by the outcome and HIV status. Based on the selected model, we explored the interpretability maps derived from the models. 215 patients were included, with an event prevalence of 22.3%. On the test set our non-imaging model had higher AUC (71.2% [Formula: see text] 1.1%) than the imaging-only model (67.3% [Formula: see text] 2.6%). The fused model was superior to both, with an average AUC = 77.3% [Formula: see text] 4.0% in the test set. The non-imaging variables were more informative in the HIV-positive group, while the imaging features were more predictive in the HIV-negative group. All three models performed better in the HIV-negative cohort. The interpretability maps show the model's focus on the lateral fissures, the corpus callosum, the midbrain, and peri-ventricular tissues. Imaging information can provide added value to predict unwanted outcomes of TBM. However, to confirm this finding, a larger dataset is needed.