Federated learning-based CT liver tumor detection using a teacher‒student SANet with semisupervised learning

Detecting liver tumors via computed tomography (CT) scans is a critical but labor-intensive task. Extensive expert annotations are needed to train effective machine learning models. This study presents an innovative approach that leverages federated learning in combination with a teacher‒student framework, an enhanced slice-aware network (SANet), and semisupervised learning (SSL) techniques to improve the CT-based liver tumor detection process while significantly reducing its labor and time costs.

Federated learning enables collaborative model training to be performed across multiple institutions without sharing sensitive patient data, thus ensuring privacy and security. The teacher-student SANet framework takes advantage of both teacher and student models, with the teacher model providing reliable pseudolabels that guide the student model in a semisupervised manner. This method not only improves the accuracy of liver tumor detection but also reduces the dependence on extensively annotated datasets.

The proposed method was validated through simulation experiments conducted in four scenarios, and it demonstrated a model accuracy of 83%, which represents an improvement over the original locally trained models.

This study presents a promising method for enhancing the CT-based liver tumor detection while reducing the incurred labor and time costs by utilizing federated learning, the teacher-student SANet framework, and SSL techniques. Compared with previous approaches, the proposed method achieved a model accuracy of 83%, representing a significant improvement.

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