1. Evolutionary image simplification for lung nodule classification with convolutional neural networks
- Author
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Daniel Lückehe and Gabriele von Voigt
- Subjects
Lung Neoplasms ,Computer science ,Decision Making ,ComputingMethodologies_IMAGEPROCESSINGANDCOMPUTERVISION ,Biomedical Engineering ,Evolutionary algorithm ,Health Informatics ,02 engineering and technology ,Convolutional neural network ,Field (computer science) ,030218 nuclear medicine & medical imaging ,Image (mathematics) ,Machine Learning ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,Humans ,Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and imaging ,Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted ,Lung ,Electronic Data Processing ,Pixel ,business.industry ,Deep learning ,Perspective (graphical) ,Solitary Pulmonary Nodule ,Pattern recognition ,General Medicine ,Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design ,Computer Science Applications ,Computer Science::Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ,020201 artificial intelligence & image processing ,Surgery ,Neural Networks, Computer ,Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ,Artificial intelligence ,Focus (optics) ,business ,Algorithms ,Software - Abstract
Understanding decisions of deep learning techniques is important. Especially in the medical field, the reasons for a decision in a classification task are as crucial as the pure classification results. In this article, we propose a new approach to compute relevant parts of a medical image. Knowing the relevant parts makes it easier to understand decisions. In our approach, a convolutional neural network is employed to learn structures of images of lung nodules. Then, an evolutionary algorithm is applied to compute a simplified version of an unknown image based on the learned structures by the convolutional neural network. In the simplified version, irrelevant parts are removed from the original image. In the results, we show simplified images which allow the observer to focus on the relevant parts. In these images, more than 50% of the pixels are simplified. The simplified pixels do not change the meaning of the images based on the learned structures by the convolutional neural network. An experimental analysis shows the potential of the approach. Besides the examples of simplified images, we analyze the run time development. Simplified images make it easier to focus on relevant parts and to find reasons for a decision. The combination of an evolutionary algorithm employing a learned convolutional neural network is well suited for the simplification task. From a research perspective, it is interesting which areas of the images are simplified and which parts are taken as relevant.
- Published
- 2018
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