Papers for
medical imaging companies
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Cytospm improves detection of diverse cell types in cytopathology images
CytoSPM: Open-Vocabulary Cytopathology Detection with Structured Prompt Bank
Abstract: Cytopathology detection requires open-vocabulary recognition because cellular categories are fine-grained, long-tailed, and continuously evolving across different organ systems. However, existing cytology detectors are mostly single-domain and closed-set, and there is still no unified benchmark for evaluating open-vocabulary cytopathology detection. We present PentaCyto, a multi-domain benchmark covering cervical, urinary, respiratory, serous fluid, and thyroid cytology, with 24 base categories and 9 held-out novel categories. Each category is associated with structured cytomorphology prompts that describe diagnostic morphological attributes and provide clinically grounded textual knowledge. We further propose CytoSPM, an efficient detector based on a decoupled two-stage design. It first extracts reusable class-agnostic visual representations, and then performs class-aware structural prompt matching with class names and cytomorphology prompts. On PentaCyto, CytoSPM outperforms existing methods in novel-category detection and open-vocabulary detection while maintaining efficient inference.
Dual-input AI improves bone tumor diagnosis from X-ray images
Integrating Local Detail and Global Context: A Dual-Input Multi-Task Learning Framework for Bone Tumor Diagnosis
Abstract: Primary bone tumors are rare but clinically aggressive neoplasms whose diagnosis from radiographs is challenged by heterogeneous morphology, subtle lesion margins, and overlapping bone structures. To address the limitations of existing single-view models, we present a dual-input, multi-task learning framework that, to our knowledge, is the first to apply bidirectional cross-modal attention between a lesion crop and the full radiograph for joint segmentation and subtype classification. Using the multi-institutional Bone Tumor X-ray Radiograph Dataset (BTXRD, n=3,746), we employ a YOLO-based detector to generate regions of interest, which are paired with full images as inputs to a dual-stream DenseNet121 architecture. Features are integrated via a novel cross-modal attention fusion strategy, refined by Hierarchical Multi-scale Feature Fusion, effectively balancing fine-grained lesion detail with global anatomical context. Evaluated on a held-out patient-level test split, the model demonstrates superior performance over single-input baselines, achieving an overall Dice Similarity Coefficient of 0.896 and a macro-averaged classification F1-score of 0.928. Notably, the system exhibits exceptional sensitivity for malignant osteosarcoma (AUC 0.999), validating the potential of dual-stream context modeling to support radiologists in accurate, early decision-making.
Parallel training improves covid diagnosis model speed and accuracy
Parallel Training Using a CNN-DNN Architecture for Accelerated Development of Diagnostic Models
Abstract: Artificial intelligence has shown promise in assisting radiologists in imaging-based diagnosis across a wide range of diseases. Efficient training of large deep learning models is essential to cope with extremely large data sets or dynamically growing disease data, like in a pandemic like situation. In this retrospective study, we collected 300 CT scans from COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 pneumonia patients from three different centers in Germany. We investigated a hybrid CNN-DNN network model based on image decomposition and localization that naturally supports parallel and efficient training of deep learning models. In total, 156 models with three different architectures were trained to capture features at different levels resulting in 12 patient-level COVID-19 diagnosis models. Diagnostic performance as well as time saving were measured. The highest accuracy was obtained from DenseNet121 and 3D CNN models with a parallel CNN-DNN approach, resulting in $88.78\%$ training, $76.67\%$ validation and $76.03\%$ test accuracy for the DenseNet121 with $4\times4\times1$ subdomains and $87.72\%$ training, $76.82\%$ validation and $74.86\%$ test accuracy, respectively, for the 3D CNN with $4\times4\times1$ subdomains. The strongest reduction in parallel training time by a factor of $31$ was observed for the 3D CNN model and $4\times4\times2$ subdomains. Our parallel training approach improves efficiency as well as performance enabling rapid model development, among others crucial for pandemic preparedness.
Multi-robot system captures detailed full-body skin images automatically
Multi-Robot Scanner for Automated Full-Body Dermoscopic Imaging
Abstract: This paper outlines the specifications and design approach used to construct a full body imaging scanner capable of capturing skin lesions at a dermatoscopic level using cameras mounted on the end-effectors of four UR10 manipulators. The system possesses a view-planning algorithm capable of appropriately selecting the best camera position to acquire images of moles, a high-level controller to allow the manipulators to work simultaneously and a collision-detector that halts the manipulators when they make contact with an object or a person. We evaluate the system through real-patient full-body scans, comparing acquired images against contact dermoscopy and an existing total-body photography system (Vectra) across clinically relevant lesion features, and quantify true optical resolving power using a USAF 1951 resolution target, yielding a smallest resolvable feature size of 22.1 microns for our scanner compared to 8.8 microns for contact dermoscopy. Results show the scanner consistently outperforms Vectra across most clinically relevant features and achieves comparable performance to contact dermoscopy for the majority of features assessed. By acquiring dermatoscopic-quality images automatically and without contact, and without requiring a separate manual dermoscopic examination, the scanner closes part of the gap between total-body photography and handheld dermoscopy, suggesting potential for future integration into screening workflows.