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Breast Cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide. While screening mammography diminishes the burden of this disease, it has some flaws related to the presence of false negatives. Adapting screening to each woman's needs could help overcome these challenges. While traditional risk models are valuable tools, we propose an image-based approach. Since artificial intelligence has proven effective in aiding the diagnosis of breast cancer, we aim to translate this technology to risk prediction. A 3-year risk prediction model, with a case-control age-matched approach, was developed based on the analysis of "prior" healthy mammograms. Two classes were defined - "risk" and "control" - based on the assessment done on the most recent examination: if the case was diagnosed with cancer, the prior mammogram was assigned to the "risk" class; otherwise, the prior mammogram was allocated to the "normal" class. In total, we found 3720 available controls and 1471 risk cases. Every mammogram used in this study was taken 3 years before the assessment used for class definition. Risk prediction was aimed through three methodologies: traditional machine learning, deep learning, and a combination of both. The AUCs obtained on the test set were 0.68 for the traditional machine learning, and 0.76 for the other two. No statistically significant differences were found among methods. Our findings suggest that the use of image-based deep learning methods holds promise on the field of Breast Cancer risk prediction, with further validation being needed to confirm their clinical applicability., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None Declared, (Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Skin lesions refer to changes or abnormalities on the skin, such as moles, freckles, cysts, warts, and more. While not all skin lesions are cancerous, some types can indicate or develop into skin cancer. Skin cancer has been on the rise in recent years, causing many deaths. However, manual examination by dermatologists is expensive and time-consuming. Research in this field has focused on developing an automated system to detect skin cancer and reduce the associated mortality rate. However, the performance of such systems needs improvement. In this study, we propose a Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique combined with Edited Nearest Neighbors (SMOTEENN) to augment the data, resulting in a more balanced dataset. Then, we used a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model on the benchmark HAM10000 dataset. The dataset comprises seven skin diseases, including Actinic Keratoses, Basal cell carcinoma, Benign keratosis, Dermatofibroma, Melanocytic nevi, Melanoma, and Vascular skin lesions. With a balanced dataset, the proposed model achieves an accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score of 99.35%, 99.00%, 99.00%, and 99.00%, respectively. The balanced dataset performs 22% better than an unbalanced dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, cardiovascular diseases are some of the primary causes of death; yet the early detection and diagnosis of such diseases have the potential to save many lives. Technological means of detection are becoming increasingly essential and numerous techniques have been created for this purpose, such as forecasting. Of these techniques, the time series forecasting technique seeks to predict future events. The long-term time series forecasting of physiological data could assist medical professionals in predicting and treating patients based on very early diagnosis. This article presents a model that utilizes a deep learning technique to predict long-term ECG signals. The forecasting model can learn signals' nonlinearity, nonstationarity, and complexity based on a long short-term memory architecture. However, this is not a trivial task as the correct forecasting of a signal that closely resembles the original complex signal's structure and behavior while minimizing any differences in amplitude continues to pose challenges. To achieve this goal, we used a dataset available on the Physio net database, called MIT-BIH, with 48 ECG recordings of 30 min each. The developed model starts with pre-processing to reduce interference in the original signals, then applies a deep learning algorithm, based on a long short-term memory (LTSM) neural network with two hidden layers. Next, we applied the root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) metrics to evaluate the performance of the model and obtained an average RMSE of 0.0070 ± 0.0028 and an average MAE of 0.0522 ± 0.0098 across all simulations. The results indicate that the proposed LSTM model is a promising technique for ECG forecasting, considering the trends of the changes in the original data series, most notably in R-peak amplitude. Given the model's accuracy and the features of the physiological signals, the system could be used to improve existing predictive healthcare systems for cardiovascular monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrasound (US) imaging is used in the diagnosis and monitoring of COVID-19 and breast cancer. The presence of Speckle Noise (SN) is a downside to its usage since it decreases lesion conspicuity. Filters can be used to remove SN, but they involve time-consuming computation and parameter tuning. Several researchers have been developing complex Deep Learning (DL) models (150,000–500,000 parameters) for the removal of simulated added SN, without focusing on the real-world application of removing naturally occurring SN from original US images. Here, a simpler (<30,000 parameters) Convolutional Neural Network Autoencoder (CNN-AE) to remove SN from US images of the breast and lung is proposed. In order to do so, simulated SN was added to such US images, considering four different noise levels (σ = 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5). The original US images (N = 1227, breast + lung) were given as targets, while the noised US images served as the input. The Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) were used to compare the output of the CNN-AE and of the Median and Lee filters with the original US images. The CNN-AE outperformed the use of these classic filters for every noise level. To see how well the model removed naturally occurring SN from the original US images and to test its real-world applicability, a CNN model that differentiates malignant from benign breast lesions was developed. Several inputs were used to train the model (original, CNN-AE denoised, filter denoised, and noised US images). The use of the original US images resulted in the highest Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) and accuracy values, while for sensitivity and negative predicted values, the CNN-AE-denoised US images (for higher σ values) achieved the best results. Our results demonstrate that the application of a simpler DL model for SN removal results in fewer misclassifications of malignant breast lesions in comparison to the use of original US images and the application of the Median filter. This shows that the use of a less-complex model and the focus on clinical practice applicability are relevant and should be considered in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is a mental disease affecting 5% of the population, and its prevalence is increasing. Depression is characterized by feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, disinterest in enjoyable activities, and sadness, which can result in suicidal thoughts. Traditional approaches to recognizing depression have relied on manually crafted techniques to extract facial expressions, which have their limitations. To address these limitations, this paper proposes using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as a practical approach for depression recognition. The proposed model in this study involves an eight-step process that includes input data, preprocessing, rescaling, model training, multi-classified results, selecting emotions based on accuracy, retraining the model, and finally, multi-classified results to determine the percentage of depression with greater accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer was the most diagnosed cancer around the world in 2020. Screening programs, based on mammography, aim to achieve early diagnosis which is of extreme importance when it comes to cancer. There are several flaws associated with mammography, with one of the most important being tissue overlapping that can result in both lesion masking and fake-lesion appearance. To overcome this, digital breast tomosynthesis takes images (slices) at different angles that are later reconstructed into a 3D image. Having in mind that the slices are planar images where tissue overlapping does not occur, the goal of the work done here was to develop a deep learning model that could, based on the said slices, classify lesions as benign or malignant. The developed model was based on the work done by Muduli et. al, with a slight change in the fully connected layers and in the regularization done. In total, 77 DBT volumes—39 benign and 38 malignant—were available. From each volume, nine slices were taken, one where the lesion was most visible and four above/below. To increase the quantity and the variability of the data, common data augmentation techniques (rotation, translation, mirroring) were applied to the original images three times. Therefore, 2772 images were used for training. Data augmentation techniques were then applied two more times—one set used for validation and one set used for testing. Our model achieved, on the testing set, an accuracy of 93.2% while the values of sensitivity, specificity, precision, F1-score, and Cohen's kappa were 92%, 94%, 94%, 94%, and 0.86, respectively. Given these results, the work done here suggests that the use of single-slice DBT can compare to state-of-the-art studies and gives a hint that with more data, better augmentation techniques and the use of transfer learning might overcome the use of mammograms in this type of studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer was the most diagnosed cancer in 2020. Several thousand women continue to die from this disease. A better and earlier diagnosis may be of great importance to improving prognosis, and that is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) could play a major role. This paper surveys different applications of AI in Breast Imaging. First, traditional Machine Learning and Deep Learning methods that can detect the presence of a lesion and classify it into benign/malignant—which could be important to diminish reading time and improve accuracy—are analyzed. Following that, researches in the field of breast cancer risk prediction using mammograms—which may be able to allow screening programs customization both on periodicity and modality—are reviewed. The subsequent section analyzes different applications of augmentation techniques that allow to surpass the lack of labeled data. Finally, still concerning the absence of big datasets with labeled data, the last section studies Self-Supervised learning, where AI models are able to learn a representation of the input by themselves. This review gives a general view of what AI can give in the field of Breast Imaging, discussing not only its potential but also the challenges that still have to be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aim: Hypoglycaemia prediction play an important role in diabetes management being able to reduce the number of dangerous situations. Thus, it is relevant to present a systematic review on the currently available prediction algorithms and models for hypoglycaemia (or hypoglycemia in US English) prediction.Methods: This study aims to systematically review the literature on data-based algorithms and models using diabetics real data for hypoglycaemia prediction. Five electronic databases were screened for studies published from January 2014 to June 2020: ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, SCOPUS, and PubMed.Results: Sixty-three eligible studies were retrieved that met the inclusion criteria. The review identifies the current trend in this topic: most of the studies perform short-term predictions (82.5%). Also, the review pinpoints the inputs and shows that information fusion is relevant for hypoglycaemia prediction. Regarding data-based models (80.9%) and hybrid models (19.1%) different predictive techniques are used: Artificial neural network (22.2%), ensemble learning (27.0%), supervised learning (20.6%), statistic/probabilistic (7.9%), autoregressive (7.9%), evolutionary (6.4%), deep learning (4.8%) and adaptative filter (3.2%). Artificial Neural networks and hybrid models show better results.Conclusions: The data-based models for blood glucose and hypoglycaemia prediction should be able to provide a good balance between the applicability and performance, integrating complementary data from different sources or from different models. This review identifies trends and possible opportunities for research in this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a type of arrhythmia characterized by irregular heartbeats, with four types, two of which are complicated to diagnose using standard techniques such as Electrocardiogram (ECG). However, and because smart wearables are increasingly a piece of commodity equipment, there are several ways of detecting and predicting AF episodes using only an ECG exam, allowing physicians easier diagnosis. By searching several databases, this study presents a review of the articles published in the last ten years, focusing on those who reported studies using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for prediction of AF. The results show that only twelve studies were selected for this systematic review, where three of them applied deep learning techniques (25%), six of them used machine learning methods (50%) and three others focused on applying general artificial intelligence models (25%). To conclude, this study revealed that the prediction of AF is yet an under-developed field in the context of AI, and deep learning techniques are increasing the accuracy, but these are not as frequently applied as it would be expected. Also, more than half of the selected studies were published since 2016, corroborating that this topic is very recent and has a high potential for additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution is becoming a rising and serious environmental problem, especially in urban areas affected by an increasing migration rate. The large availability of sensor data enables the adoption of analytical tools to provide decision support capabilities. Employing sensors facilitates air pollution monitoring, but the lack of predictive capability limits such systems' potential in practical scenarios. On the other hand, forecasting methods offer the opportunity to predict the future pollution in specific areas, potentially suggesting useful preventive measures. To date, many works tackled the problem of air pollution forecasting, most of which are based on sequence models. These models are trained with raw pollution data and are subsequently utilized to make predictions. This paper proposes a novel approach evaluating four different architectures that utilize camera images to estimate the air pollution in those areas. These images are further enhanced with weather data to boost the classification accuracy. The proposed approach exploits generative adversarial networks combined with data augmentation techniques to mitigate the class imbalance problem. The experiments show that the proposed method achieves robust accuracy of up to 0.88, which is comparable to sequence models and conventional models that utilize air pollution data. This is a remarkable result considering that the historic air pollution data is directly related to the output—future air pollution data, whereas the proposed architecture uses camera images to recognize the air pollution—which is an inherently much more difficult problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One class of applications for human activity recognition methods is found in mobile devices for monitoring older adults and people with special needs. Recently, many studies were performed to create intelligent methods for the recognition of human activities. However, the different mobile devices in the market acquire the data from sensors at different frequencies. This paper focuses on implementing four data normalization techniques, i.e., MaxAbsScaler, MinMaxScaler, RobustScaler, and Z-Score. Subsequently, we evaluate the impact of the normalization algorithms with deep neural networks (DNN) for the classification of the human activities. The impact of the data normalization was counterintuitive, resulting in a degradation of performance. Namely, when using the accelerometer data, the accuracy dropped from about 79% to only 53% for the best normalization approach. Similarly, for the gyroscope data, the accuracy without normalization was about 81.5%, whereas with the best normalization, it was only 60%. It can be concluded that data normalization techniques are not helpful in classification problems with homogeneous data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) typically comes at the cost of small spatial coverage, high expenses and long scan times. Accelerating MRI acquisition by taking less measurements yields the potential to relax these inherent forfeits. Recent breakthroughs in the field of Machine Learning have shown high-resolution (HR) images could be recovered from low-resolution (LR) signals via super-resolution (SR). In particular, a novel class of neural networks named Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) has manifested an alternative way of conceiving models capable of generating data. GANs can learn to infer details based on some prior information, subsequently recovering missing data. Accordingly, they manifest huge potential in MRI reconstruction and acceleration tasks. This paper conducts a review on GAN-based SR methods, exhibiting the immersive ability of GANs on upscaling MRIs by a scale factor of × 4 while at the same time maintaining trustworthy and high-frequency details. Despite quantitative results suggesting SRResCycGAN outperforms other popular deep learning methods in recovering × 4 downgraded images, qualitative results show Beby-GAN holds the best perceptual quality and proves GAN-based methods hold the capacity to reduce medical costs, distress patients and even enable new MRI applications where it is currently too slow or expensive. • Survey of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for MRI super-resolution. • GANs can upscale MRIs by x4 maintaining trustworthy and high-frequency-details. • Beby-GAN attained the best perceptual quality in recovering x4 downsampled MRIs. • Denoising algorithms improved the upscaled images structural similarity by 20%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]