Regensburg Center of Health Sciences and Technology - RCHST
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Aims
VA is an endoscopic finding of celiac disease (CD), which can easily be missed if pretest probability is low. In this study, we aimed to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for the detection of villous atrophy on endoscopic images.
Methods
858 images from 182 patients with VA and 846 images from 323 patients with normal duodenal mucosa were used for training and internal validation of an AI algorithm (ResNet18). A separate dataset was used for external validation, as well as determination of detection performance of experts, trainees and trainees with AI support. According to the AI consultation distribution, images were stratified into “easy” and “difficult”.
Results
Internal validation showed 82%, 85% and 84% for sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. External validation showed 90%, 76% and 84%. The algorithm was significantly more sensitive and accurate than trainees, trainees with AI support and experts in endoscopy. AI support in trainees was associated with significantly improved performance. While all endoscopists showed significantly lower detection for “difficult” images, AI performance remained stable.
Conclusions
The algorithm outperformed trainees and experts in sensitivity and accuracy for VA detection. The significant improvement with AI support suggests a potential clinical benefit. Stable performance of the algorithm in “easy” and “difficult” test images may indicate an advantage in macroscopically challenging cases.
Aims
Evaluation of the add-on effect an artificial intelligence (AI) based clinical decision support system has on the performance of endoscopists with different degrees of expertise in the field of Barrett's esophagus (BE) and Barrett's esophagus-related neoplasia (BERN).
Methods
The support system is based on a multi-task deep learning model trained to solve a segmentation and several classification tasks. The training approach represents an extension of the ECMT semi-supervised learning algorithm. The complete system evaluates a decision tree between estimated motion, classification, segmentation, and temporal constraints, to decide when and how the prediction is highlighted to the observer. In our current study, ninety-six video cases of patients with BE and BERN were prospectively collected and assessed by Barrett's specialists and non-specialists. All video cases were evaluated twice – with and without AI assistance. The order of appearance, either with or without AI support, was assigned randomly. Participants were asked to detect and characterize regions of dysplasia or early neoplasia within the video sequences.
Results
Standalone sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the AI system were 92.16%, 68.89%, and 81.25%, respectively. Mean sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of expert endoscopists without AI support were 83,33%, 58,20%, and 71,48 %, respectively. Gastroenterologists without Barrett's expertise but with AI support had a comparable performance with a mean sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 76,63%, 65,35%, and 71,36%, respectively.
Conclusions
Non-Barrett's experts with AI support had a similar performance as experts in a video-based study.
Aims
AI has proven great potential in assisting endoscopists in diagnostics, however its role in therapeutic endoscopy remains unclear. Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is a technically demanding intervention with a slow learning curve and relevant risks like bleeding and perforation. Therefore, we aimed to develop an algorithm for the real-time detection and delineation of relevant structures during third-space endoscopy.
Methods
5470 still images from 59 full length videos (47 ESD, 12 POEM) were annotated. 179681 additional unlabeled images were added to the training dataset. Consequently, a DeepLabv3+ neural network architecture was trained with the ECMT semi-supervised algorithm (under review elsewhere). Evaluation of vessel detection was performed on a dataset of 101 standardized video clips from 15 separate third-space endoscopy videos with 200 predefined blood vessels.
Results
Internal validation yielded an overall mean Dice score of 85% (68% for blood vessels, 86% for submucosal layer, 88% for muscle layer). On the video test data, the overall vessel detection rate (VDR) was 94% (96% for ESD, 74% for POEM). The median overall vessel detection time (VDT) was 0.32 sec (0.3 sec for ESD, 0.62 sec for POEM).
Conclusions
Evaluation of the developed algorithm on a video test dataset showed high VDR and quick VDT, especially for ESD. Further research will focus on a possible clinical benefit of the AI application for VDR and VDT during third-space endoscopy.
Background and aims
Celiac disease with its endoscopic manifestation of villous atrophy is underdiagnosed worldwide. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) for the macroscopic detection of villous atrophy at routine esophagogastroduodenoscopy may improve diagnostic performance.
Methods
A dataset of 858 endoscopic images of 182 patients with villous atrophy and 846 images from 323 patients with normal duodenal mucosa was collected and used to train a ResNet 18 deep learning model to detect villous atrophy. An external data set was used to test the algorithm, in addition to six fellows and four board certified gastroenterologists. Fellows could consult the AI algorithm’s result during the test. From their consultation distribution, a stratification of test images into “easy” and “difficult” was performed and used for classified performance measurement.
Results
External validation of the AI algorithm yielded values of 90 %, 76 %, and 84 % for sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, respectively. Fellows scored values of 63 %, 72 % and 67 %, while the corresponding values in experts were 72 %, 69 % and 71 %, respectively. AI consultation significantly improved all trainee performance statistics. While fellows and experts showed significantly lower performance for “difficult” images, the performance of the AI algorithm was stable.
Conclusion
In this study, an AI algorithm outperformed endoscopy fellows and experts in the detection of villous atrophy on endoscopic still images. AI decision support significantly improved the performance of non-expert endoscopists. The stable performance on “difficult” images suggests a further positive add-on effect in challenging cases.
Clinical setting
Third space procedures such as endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) are complex minimally invasive techniques with an elevated risk for operator-dependent adverse events such as bleeding and perforation. This risk arises from accidental dissection into the muscle layer or through submucosal blood vessels as the submucosal cutting plane within the expanding resection site is not always apparent. Deep learning algorithms have shown considerable potential for the detection and characterization of gastrointestinal lesions. So-called AI – clinical decision support solutions (AI-CDSS) are commercially available for polyp detection during colonoscopy. Until now, these computer programs have concentrated on diagnostics whereas an AI-CDSS for interventional endoscopy has not yet been introduced. We aimed to develop an AI-CDSS („Smart ESD“) for real-time intra-procedural detection and delineation of blood vessels, tissue structures and endoscopic instruments during third-space endoscopic procedures.
Characteristics of Smart ESD
An AI-CDSS was invented that delineates blood vessels, tissue structures and endoscopic instruments during third-space endoscopy in real-time. The output can be displayed by an overlay over the endoscopic image with different modes of visualization, such as a color-coded semitransparent area overlay, or border tracing (demonstration video). Hereby the optimal layer for dissection can be visualized, which is close above or directly at the muscle layer, depending on the applied technique (ESD or POEM). Furthermore, relevant blood vessels (thickness> 1mm) are delineated. Spatial proximity between the electrosurgical knife and a blood vessel triggers a warning signal. By this guidance system, inadvertent dissection through blood vessels could be averted.
Technical specifications
A DeepLabv3+ neural network architecture with KSAC and a 101-layer ResNeSt backbone was used for the development of Smart ESD. It was trained and validated with 2565 annotated still images from 27 full length third-space endoscopic videos. The annotation classes were blood vessel, submucosal layer, muscle layer, electrosurgical knife and endoscopic instrument shaft. A test on a separate data set yielded an intersection over union (IoU) of 68%, a Dice Score of 80% and a pixel accuracy of 87%, demonstrating a high overlap between expert and AI segmentation. Further experiments on standardized video clips showed a mean vessel detection rate (VDR) of 85% with values of 92%, 70% and 95% for POEM, rectal ESD and esophageal ESD respectively. False positive measurements occurred 0.75 times per minute. 7 out of 9 vessels which caused intraprocedural bleeding were caught by the algorithm, as well as both vessels which required hemostasis via hemostatic forceps.
Future perspectives
Smart ESD performed well for vessel and tissue detection and delineation on still images, as well as on video clips. During a live demonstration in the endoscopy suite, clinical applicability of the innovation was examined. The lag time for processing of the live endoscopic image was too short to be visually detectable for the interventionist. Even though the algorithm could not be applied during actual dissection by the interventionist, Smart ESD appeared readily deployable during visual assessment by ESD experts. Therefore, we plan to conduct a clinical trial in order to obtain CE-certification of the algorithm. This new technology may improve procedural safety and speed, as well as training of modern minimally invasive endoscopic resection techniques.
Even though artificial intelligence and machine learning have demonstrated remarkable performances in medical image computing, their level of accountability and transparency must be provided in such evaluations. The reliability related to machine learning predictions must be explained and interpreted, especially if diagnosis support is addressed. For this task, the black-box nature of deep learning techniques must be lightened up to transfer its promising results into clinical practice. Hence, we aim to investigate the use of explainable artificial intelligence techniques to quantitatively highlight discriminative regions during the classification of earlycancerous tissues in Barrett’s esophagus-diagnosed patients. Four Convolutional Neural Network models (AlexNet, SqueezeNet, ResNet50, and VGG16) were analyzed using five different interpretation techniques (saliency, guided backpropagation, integrated gradients, input × gradients, and DeepLIFT) to compare their agreement with experts’ previous annotations of cancerous tissue. We could show that saliency attributes match best with the manual experts’ delineations. Moreover, there is moderate to high correlation between the sensitivity of a model and the human-and-computer agreement. The results also lightened that the higher the model’s sensitivity, the stronger the correlation of human and computational segmentation agreement. We observed a relevant relation between computational learning and experts’ insights, demonstrating how human knowledge may influence the correct computational learning.
Barrett's esophagus denotes a disorder in the digestive system that affects the esophagus' mucosal cells, causing reflux, and showing potential convergence to esophageal adenocarcinoma if not treated in initial stages. Thus, fast and reliable computer-aided diagnosis becomes considerably welcome. Nevertheless, such approaches usually suffer from imbalanced datasets, which can be addressed through Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Such techniques generate realistic images based on observed samples, even though at the cost of a proper selection of its hyperparameters. Many works employed a class of nature-inspired algorithms called metaheuristics to tackle the problem considering distinct deep learning approaches. Therefore, this paper's main contribution is to introduce metaheuristic techniques to fine-tune GANs in the context of Barrett's esophagus identification, as well as to investigate the feasibility of generating high-quality synthetic images for early-cancer assisted identification.
Background and aims: The accurate differentiation between T1a and T1b Barrett’s cancer has both therapeutic and prognostic implications but is challenging even for experienced physicians. We trained an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system on the basis of deep artificial neural networks (deep learning) to differentiate between T1a and T1b Barrett’s cancer white-light images.
Methods: Endoscopic images from three tertiary care centres in Germany were collected retrospectively. A deep learning system was trained and tested using the principles of cross-validation. A total of 230 white-light endoscopic images (108 T1a and 122 T1b) was evaluated with the AI-system. For comparison, the images were also classified by experts specialized in endoscopic diagnosis and treatment of Barrett’s cancer.
Results: The sensitivity, specificity, F1 and accuracy of the AI-system in the differentiation between T1a and T1b cancer lesions was 0.77, 0.64, 0.73 and 0.71, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference between the performance of the AI-system and that of human experts with sensitivity, specificity, F1 and accuracy of 0.63, 0.78, 0.67 and 0.70 respectively.
Conclusion: This pilot study demonstrates the first multicenter application of an AI-based system in the prediction of submucosal invasion in endoscopic images of Barrett’s cancer. AI scored equal to international experts in the field, but more work is necessary to improve the system and apply it to video sequences and in a real-life setting. Nevertheless, the correct prediction of submucosal invasion in Barret´s cancer remains challenging for both experts and AI.
Barrett's esophagus figured a swift rise in the number of cases in the past years. Although traditional diagnosis methods offered a vital role in early-stage treatment, they are generally time- and resource-consuming. In this context, computer-aided approaches for automatic diagnosis emerged in the literature since early detection is intrinsically related to remission probabilities. However, they still suffer from drawbacks because of the lack of available data for machine learning purposes, thus implying reduced recognition rates. This work introduces Generative Adversarial Networks to generate high-quality endoscopic images, thereby identifying Barrett's esophagus and adenocarcinoma more precisely. Further, Convolution Neural Networks are used for feature extraction and classification purposes. The proposed approach is validated over two datasets of endoscopic images, with the experiments conducted over the full and patch-split images. The application of Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks for the data augmentation step and LeNet-5 and AlexNet for the classification step allowed us to validate the proposed methodology over an extensive set of datasets (based on original and augmented sets), reaching results of 90% of accuracy for the patch-based approach and 85% for the image-based approach. Both results are based on augmented datasets and are statistically different from the ones obtained in the original datasets of the same kind. Moreover, the impact of data augmentation was evaluated in the context of image description and classification, and the results obtained using synthetic images outperformed the ones over the original datasets, as well as other recent approaches from the literature. Such results suggest promising insights related to the importance of proper data for the accurate classification concerning computer-assisted Barrett's esophagus and adenocarcinoma detection.
Based on previous work by our group with manual annotation of visible Barrett oesophagus (BE) cancer images, a real-time deep learning artificial intelligence (AI) system was developed. While an expert endoscopist conducts the endoscopic assessment of BE, our AI system captures random images from the real-time camera livestream and provides a global prediction (classification), as well as a dense prediction (segmentation) differentiating accurately between normal BE and early oesophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). The AI system showed an accuracy of 89.9% on 14 cases with neoplastic BE.