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Adaptive IoU Thresholding for Improving Small Object Detection: A Proof-of-Concept Study of Hand Erosions Classification of Patients with Rheumatic Arthritis on X-ray Images

Authors :
Karl Ludger Radke
Matthias Kors
Anja Müller-Lutz
Miriam Frenken
Lena Marie Wilms
Xenofon Baraliakos
Hans-Jörg Wittsack
Jörg H. W. Distler
Daniel B. Abrar
Gerald Antoch
Philipp Sewerin
Source :
Diagnostics, Vol 13, Iss 1, p 104 (2022)
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2022.

Abstract

In recent years, much research evaluating the radiographic destruction of finger joints in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using deep learning models was conducted. Unfortunately, most previous models were not clinically applicable due to the small object regions as well as the close spatial relationship. In recent years, a new network structure called RetinaNets, in combination with the focal loss function, proved reliable for detecting even small objects. Therefore, the study aimed to increase the recognition performance to a clinically valuable level by proposing an innovative approach with adaptive changes in intersection over union (IoU) values during training of Retina Networks using the focal loss error function. To this end, the erosion score was determined using the Sharp van der Heijde (SvH) metric on 300 conventional radiographs from 119 patients with RA. Subsequently, a standard RetinaNet with different IoU values as well as adaptively modified IoU values were trained and compared in terms of accuracy, mean average accuracy (mAP), and IoU. With the proposed approach of adaptive IoU values during training, erosion detection accuracy could be improved to 94% and an mAP of 0.81 ± 0.18. In contrast Retina networks with static IoU values achieved only an accuracy of 80% and an mAP of 0.43 ± 0.24. Thus, adaptive adjustment of IoU values during training is a simple and effective method to increase the recognition accuracy of small objects such as finger and wrist joints.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20754418
Volume :
13
Issue :
1
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Diagnostics
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.16376d6af8d840e9a9757db0c9d567d9
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13010104