Cross-Center Online Generalization Algorithm with Unadversarial Consistency for Fetal Heart Ultrasound View...

Fetal congenital heart disease (FCHD) remains a leading cause of infant mortality globally, yet the clinical deployment of deep learning models for automated fetal echocardiographic view recognition faces performance degradation due to domain shifts across medical centers. This study aims to develop a cross-center online adaptation framework to enhance model generalization in heterogeneous clinical environments without requiring target-domain labels. We propose a novel framework integrating three core components: (1) a dual-branch architecture with unadversarial perturbation-based consistency regularization to enforce feature invariance, (2) uncertainty-aware loss weighting via evidential deep learning (EDL) to prioritize high-uncertainty samples, and (3) selective fine-tuning of Batch Normalization (BN) layers to adapt domain-sensitive parameters efficiently. The framework dynamically adjusts model parameters during inference using unlabeled test data, avoiding costly retraining. Evaluated on multicenter fetal echocardiography datasets, the framework improved mean recognition accuracy by 0.88-2.55% across six deep learning models. DenseNet achieved the highest external test accuracy of 82.29%, outperforming baseline models. Feature visualization via t-SNE and heatmaps confirmed enhanced discriminative capability, while confusion matrices revealed reduced misclassification rates for challenging views (e.g., RVOT vs. 3VV/3VT). This work establishes a label-free adaptation strategy to address domain shifts in fetal ultrasound, demonstrating robust generalization across diverse clinical settings. By bridging AI innovation with practical deployment requirements, the framework offers a scalable solution to standardize prenatal screening quality, particularly benefiting resource-limited regions. Future efforts will extend validation to dynamic video analysis and broader multicenter datasets.