Diagnosis of focal liver lesions from ultrasound using deep learning

The purpose of this study was to create an algorithm that simultaneously detects and characterizes (benign vs. malignant) focal liver lesion (FLL) using deep learning.

We trained our algorithm on a dataset proposed during a data challenge organized at the 2018 Journées Francophones de Radiologie. The dataset was composed of 367 two-dimensional ultrasound images from 367 individual livers, captured at various institutions. The algorithm was guided using an attention mechanism with annotations made by a radiologist. The algorithm was then tested on a new data set from 177 patients.

The models reached mean ROC-AUC scores of 0.935 for FLL detection and 0.916 for FLL characterization over three shuffled three-fold cross-validations performed with the training data. On the new dataset of 177 patients, our models reached a weighted mean ROC-AUC scores of 0.891 for seven different tasks.

This study that uses a supervised-attention mechanism focused on FLL detection and characterization from liver ultrasound images. This method could prove to be highly relevant for medical imaging once validated on a larger independent cohort.