2023
Conference article
Open Access
On the applicability of prototypical part learning in medical images: breast masses classification using ProtoPNet
Carloni G., Berti A., Iacconi C., Pascali M. A., Colantonio S.
Deep learning models have become state-of-the-art in many areas, ranging from computer vision to agriculture research. However, concerns have been raised with respect to the transparency of their decisions, especially in the image domain. In this regard, Explainable Artificial Intelligence has been gaining popularity in recent years. The ProtoPNet model, which breaks down an image into prototypes and uses evidence gathered from the prototypes to classify an image, represents an appealing approach. Still, questions regarding its effectiveness arise when the application domain changes from real-world natural images to gray-scale medical images. This work explores the applicability of prototypical part learning in medical imaging by experimenting with ProtoPNet on a breast masses classification task. The two considered aspects were the classification capabilities and the validity of explanations. We looked for the optimal model's hyperparameter configuration via a random search. We trained the model in a five-fold CV supervised framework, with mammogram images cropped around the lesions and ground-truth labels of benign/malignant masses. Then, we compared the performance metrics of ProtoPNet to that of the corresponding base architecture, which was ResNet18, trained under the same framework. In addition, an experienced radiologist provided a clinical viewpoint on the quality of the learned prototypes, the patch activations, and the global explanations. We achieved a Recall of 0.769 and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.719 in our experiments. Even though our findings are non-optimal for entering the clinical practice yet, the radiologist found ProtoPNet's explanations very intuitive, reporting a high level of satisfaction. Therefore, we believe that prototypical part learning offers a reasonable and promising trade-off between classification performance and the quality of the related explanation.Source: ICPR 2022 - International Conference on Pattern Recognition - ICPR 2022 International Workshops and Challenges, pp. 539–557, Montreal, Canada, 21-25/08/2022
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-37660-3_38
Metrics:
Carloni G., Berti A., Iacconi C., Pascali M. A., Colantonio S.
Deep learning models have become state-of-the-art in many areas, ranging from computer vision to agriculture research. However, concerns have been raised with respect to the transparency of their decisions, especially in the image domain. In this regard, Explainable Artificial Intelligence has been gaining popularity in recent years. The ProtoPNet model, which breaks down an image into prototypes and uses evidence gathered from the prototypes to classify an image, represents an appealing approach. Still, questions regarding its effectiveness arise when the application domain changes from real-world natural images to gray-scale medical images. This work explores the applicability of prototypical part learning in medical imaging by experimenting with ProtoPNet on a breast masses classification task. The two considered aspects were the classification capabilities and the validity of explanations. We looked for the optimal model's hyperparameter configuration via a random search. We trained the model in a five-fold CV supervised framework, with mammogram images cropped around the lesions and ground-truth labels of benign/malignant masses. Then, we compared the performance metrics of ProtoPNet to that of the corresponding base architecture, which was ResNet18, trained under the same framework. In addition, an experienced radiologist provided a clinical viewpoint on the quality of the learned prototypes, the patch activations, and the global explanations. We achieved a Recall of 0.769 and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.719 in our experiments. Even though our findings are non-optimal for entering the clinical practice yet, the radiologist found ProtoPNet's explanations very intuitive, reporting a high level of satisfaction. Therefore, we believe that prototypical part learning offers a reasonable and promising trade-off between classification performance and the quality of the related explanation.Source: ICPR 2022 - International Conference on Pattern Recognition - ICPR 2022 International Workshops and Challenges, pp. 539–557, Montreal, Canada, 21-25/08/2022
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-37660-3_38
Metrics:
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2023
Journal article
Open Access
Raman spectroscopy and topological machine learning for cancer grading
Conti F., D'Acunto M., Caudai C., Colantonio C., Gaeta R., Moroni D., Pascali M. A.
In the last decade, Raman Spectroscopy is establishing itself as a highly promising technique for the classification of tumour tissues as it allows to obtain the biochemical maps of the tissues under investigation, making it possible to observe changes among different tissues in terms of biochemical constituents (proteins, lipid structures, DNA, vitamins, and so on). In this paper, we aim to show that techniques emerging from the cross-fertilization of persistent homology and machine learning can support the classification of Raman spectra extracted from cancerous tissues for tumour grading. In more detail, topological features of Raman spectra and machine learning classifiers are trained in combination as an automatic classification pipeline in order to select the best-performing pair. The case study is the grading of chondrosarcoma in four classes: cross and leave-one-patient-out validations have been used to assess the classification accuracy of the method. The binary classification achieves a validation accuracy of 81% and a test accuracy of 90%. Moreover, the test dataset has been collected at a different time and with different equipment. Such results are achieved by a support vector classifier trained with the Betti Curve representation of the topological features extracted from the Raman spectra, and are excellent compared with the existing literature. The added value of such results is that the model for the prediction of the chondrosarcoma grading could easily be implemented in clinical practice, possibly integrated into the acquisition system.Source: Scientific reports (Nature Publishing Group) 13 (2023). doi:10.1038/s41598-023-34457-5
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-34457-5
Metrics:
Conti F., D'Acunto M., Caudai C., Colantonio C., Gaeta R., Moroni D., Pascali M. A.
In the last decade, Raman Spectroscopy is establishing itself as a highly promising technique for the classification of tumour tissues as it allows to obtain the biochemical maps of the tissues under investigation, making it possible to observe changes among different tissues in terms of biochemical constituents (proteins, lipid structures, DNA, vitamins, and so on). In this paper, we aim to show that techniques emerging from the cross-fertilization of persistent homology and machine learning can support the classification of Raman spectra extracted from cancerous tissues for tumour grading. In more detail, topological features of Raman spectra and machine learning classifiers are trained in combination as an automatic classification pipeline in order to select the best-performing pair. The case study is the grading of chondrosarcoma in four classes: cross and leave-one-patient-out validations have been used to assess the classification accuracy of the method. The binary classification achieves a validation accuracy of 81% and a test accuracy of 90%. Moreover, the test dataset has been collected at a different time and with different equipment. Such results are achieved by a support vector classifier trained with the Betti Curve representation of the topological features extracted from the Raman spectra, and are excellent compared with the existing literature. The added value of such results is that the model for the prediction of the chondrosarcoma grading could easily be implemented in clinical practice, possibly integrated into the acquisition system.Source: Scientific reports (Nature Publishing Group) 13 (2023). doi:10.1038/s41598-023-34457-5
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-34457-5
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ISTI Repository | www.nature.com | CNR ExploRA
2023
Journal article
Open Access
3D-Vision-transformer stacking ensemble for assessing prostate cancer aggressiveness from T2w images
Pachetti E., Colantonio S.
Vision transformers represent the cutting-edge topic in computer vision and are usually employed on two-dimensional data following a transfer learning approach. In this work, we propose a trained-from-scratch stacking ensemble of 3D-vision transformers to assess prostate cancer aggressiveness from T2-weighted images to help radiologists diagnose this disease without performing a biopsy. We trained 18 3D-vision transformers on T2-weighted axial acquisitions and combined them into two- and three-model stacking ensembles. We defined two metrics for measuring model prediction confidence, and we trained all the ensemble combinations according to a five-fold cross-validation, evaluating their accuracy, confidence in predictions, and calibration. In addition, we optimized the 18 base ViTs and compared the best-performing base and ensemble models by re-training them on a 100-sample bootstrapped training set and evaluating each model on the hold-out test set. We compared the two distributions by calculating the median and the 95% confidence interval and performing a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The best-performing 3D-vision-transformer stacking ensemble provided state-of-the-art results in terms of area under the receiving operating curve (0.89 [0.61-1]) and exceeded the area under the precision-recall curve of the base model of 22% (p < 0.001). However, it resulted to be less confident in classifying the positive class.Source: Bioengineering (Basel) 10 (2023). doi:10.3390/bioengineering10091015
DOI: 10.3390/bioengineering10091015
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Metrics:
Pachetti E., Colantonio S.
Vision transformers represent the cutting-edge topic in computer vision and are usually employed on two-dimensional data following a transfer learning approach. In this work, we propose a trained-from-scratch stacking ensemble of 3D-vision transformers to assess prostate cancer aggressiveness from T2-weighted images to help radiologists diagnose this disease without performing a biopsy. We trained 18 3D-vision transformers on T2-weighted axial acquisitions and combined them into two- and three-model stacking ensembles. We defined two metrics for measuring model prediction confidence, and we trained all the ensemble combinations according to a five-fold cross-validation, evaluating their accuracy, confidence in predictions, and calibration. In addition, we optimized the 18 base ViTs and compared the best-performing base and ensemble models by re-training them on a 100-sample bootstrapped training set and evaluating each model on the hold-out test set. We compared the two distributions by calculating the median and the 95% confidence interval and performing a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The best-performing 3D-vision-transformer stacking ensemble provided state-of-the-art results in terms of area under the receiving operating curve (0.89 [0.61-1]) and exceeded the area under the precision-recall curve of the base model of 22% (p < 0.001). However, it resulted to be less confident in classifying the positive class.Source: Bioengineering (Basel) 10 (2023). doi:10.3390/bioengineering10091015
DOI: 10.3390/bioengineering10091015
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Metrics:
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ISTI Repository | www.mdpi.com | CNR ExploRA
2023
Journal article
Open Access
The role of causality in explainable artificial intelligence
Carloni G., Berti A., Colantonio S.
Causality and eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) have developed as separate fields in computer science, even though the underlying concepts of causation and explanation share common ancient roots. This is further enforced by the lack of review works jointly covering these two fields. In this paper, we investigate the literature to try to understand how and to what extent causality and XAI are intertwined. More precisely, we seek to uncover what kinds of relationships exist between the two concepts and how one can benefit from them, for instance, in building trust in AI systems. As a result, three main perspectives are identified. In the first one, the lack of causality is seen as one of the major limitations of current AI and XAI approaches, and the "optimal" form of explanations is investigated. The second is a pragmatic perspective and considers XAI as a tool to foster scientific exploration for causal inquiry, via the identification of pursue-worthy experimental manipulations. Finally, the third perspective supports the idea that causality is propaedeutic to XAI in three possible manners: exploiting concepts borrowed from causality to support or improve XAI, utilizing counterfactuals for explainability, and considering accessing a causal model as explaining itself. To complement our analysis, we also provide relevant software solutions used to automate causal tasks. We believe our work provides a unified view of the two fields of causality and XAI by highlighting potential domain bridges and uncovering possible limitations.Source: Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Data mining and knowledge discovery (2023).
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Carloni G., Berti A., Colantonio S.
Causality and eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) have developed as separate fields in computer science, even though the underlying concepts of causation and explanation share common ancient roots. This is further enforced by the lack of review works jointly covering these two fields. In this paper, we investigate the literature to try to understand how and to what extent causality and XAI are intertwined. More precisely, we seek to uncover what kinds of relationships exist between the two concepts and how one can benefit from them, for instance, in building trust in AI systems. As a result, three main perspectives are identified. In the first one, the lack of causality is seen as one of the major limitations of current AI and XAI approaches, and the "optimal" form of explanations is investigated. The second is a pragmatic perspective and considers XAI as a tool to foster scientific exploration for causal inquiry, via the identification of pursue-worthy experimental manipulations. Finally, the third perspective supports the idea that causality is propaedeutic to XAI in three possible manners: exploiting concepts borrowed from causality to support or improve XAI, utilizing counterfactuals for explainability, and considering accessing a causal model as explaining itself. To complement our analysis, we also provide relevant software solutions used to automate causal tasks. We believe our work provides a unified view of the two fields of causality and XAI by highlighting potential domain bridges and uncovering possible limitations.Source: Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Data mining and knowledge discovery (2023).
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
See at:
arxiv.org | ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Conference article
Open Access
Causality-Driven One-Shot learning for prostate cancer grading from MRI
Carloni G., Pachetti E., Colantonio S.
In this paper, we present a novel method to automatically classify medical images that learns and leverages weak causal signals in the image. Our framework consists of a convolutional neural network backbone and a causality-extractor module that extracts cause-effect relationships between feature maps that can inform the model on the appearance of a feature in one place of the image, given the presence of another feature within some other place of the image. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach in low-data scenarios, we train our causality-driven architecture in a One-shot learning scheme, where we propose a new meta-learning procedure entailing meta-training and meta-testing tasks that are designed using related classes but at different levels of granularity. We conduct binary and multi-class classification experiments on a publicly available dataset of prostate MRI images. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed causality-driven module, we perform an ablation study and conduct qualitative assessments using class activation maps to highlight regions strongly influencing the network's decision-making process. Our findings show that causal relationships among features play a crucial role in enhancing the model's ability to discern relevant information and yielding more reliable and interpretable predictions. This would make it a promising approach for medical image classification tasks.Source: ICCV 2023 - International Conference on Computer Vision. Computer Vision for Automated Medical Diagnosis Workshop, Parigi, Francia, 02/10/2023
Carloni G., Pachetti E., Colantonio S.
In this paper, we present a novel method to automatically classify medical images that learns and leverages weak causal signals in the image. Our framework consists of a convolutional neural network backbone and a causality-extractor module that extracts cause-effect relationships between feature maps that can inform the model on the appearance of a feature in one place of the image, given the presence of another feature within some other place of the image. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach in low-data scenarios, we train our causality-driven architecture in a One-shot learning scheme, where we propose a new meta-learning procedure entailing meta-training and meta-testing tasks that are designed using related classes but at different levels of granularity. We conduct binary and multi-class classification experiments on a publicly available dataset of prostate MRI images. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed causality-driven module, we perform an ablation study and conduct qualitative assessments using class activation maps to highlight regions strongly influencing the network's decision-making process. Our findings show that causal relationships among features play a crucial role in enhancing the model's ability to discern relevant information and yielding more reliable and interpretable predictions. This would make it a promising approach for medical image classification tasks.Source: ICCV 2023 - International Conference on Computer Vision. Computer Vision for Automated Medical Diagnosis Workshop, Parigi, Francia, 02/10/2023
See at:
arxiv.org | ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Journal article
Open Access
A systematic review of few-shot learning in medical imaging
Pachetti E., Colantonio S.
The lack of annotated medical images limits the performance of deep learning models, which usually need large-scale labelled datasets. Few-shot learning techniques can reduce data scarcity issues and enhance medical image analysis, especially with meta-learning. This systematic review gives a comprehensive overview of few-shot learning in medical imaging. We searched the literature systematically and selected 80 relevant articles published from 2018 to 2023. We clustered the articles based on medical outcomes, such as tumour segmentation, disease classification, and image registration; anatomical structure investigated (i.e. heart, lung, etc.); and the meta-learning method used. For each cluster, we examined the papers' distributions and the results provided by the state-of-the-art. In addition, we identified a generic pipeline shared among all the studies. The review shows that few-shot learning can overcome data scarcity in most outcomes and that meta-learning is a popular choice to perform few-shot learning because it can adapt to new tasks with few labelled samples. In addition, following meta-learning, supervised learning and semi-supervised learning stand out as the predominant techniques employed to tackle few-shot learning challenges in medical imaging and also best performing. Lastly, we observed that the primary application areas predominantly encompass cardiac, pulmonary, and abdominal domains. This systematic review aims to inspire further research to improve medical image analysis and patient care.Source: Artificial intelligence in medicine (Print) (2023).
Pachetti E., Colantonio S.
The lack of annotated medical images limits the performance of deep learning models, which usually need large-scale labelled datasets. Few-shot learning techniques can reduce data scarcity issues and enhance medical image analysis, especially with meta-learning. This systematic review gives a comprehensive overview of few-shot learning in medical imaging. We searched the literature systematically and selected 80 relevant articles published from 2018 to 2023. We clustered the articles based on medical outcomes, such as tumour segmentation, disease classification, and image registration; anatomical structure investigated (i.e. heart, lung, etc.); and the meta-learning method used. For each cluster, we examined the papers' distributions and the results provided by the state-of-the-art. In addition, we identified a generic pipeline shared among all the studies. The review shows that few-shot learning can overcome data scarcity in most outcomes and that meta-learning is a popular choice to perform few-shot learning because it can adapt to new tasks with few labelled samples. In addition, following meta-learning, supervised learning and semi-supervised learning stand out as the predominant techniques employed to tackle few-shot learning challenges in medical imaging and also best performing. Lastly, we observed that the primary application areas predominantly encompass cardiac, pulmonary, and abdominal domains. This systematic review aims to inspire further research to improve medical image analysis and patient care.Source: Artificial intelligence in medicine (Print) (2023).
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ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Report
Open Access
Alzheimer disease detection from Raman spectroscopy of the cerebrospinal fluid via topological machine learning
Conti F., Banchelli M., Bessi V., Cecchi C., Chiti F., Colantonio S., D'Andrea C., De Angelis M., Moroni D., Nacmias B., Pascali M. A., Sorbi S., Matteini P.
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 19 subjects who received a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as of 5 pathological controls have been collected and analysed by Raman spectroscopy (RS). We investigated whether the raw and preprocessed Raman spectra could be used to distinguish AD from controls. First, we applied standard Machine Learning (ML) methods obtaining unsatisfactory results. Then, we applied ML to a set of topological descriptors extracted from raw spectra, achieving a very good classification accuracy (> 87%). Although our results are preliminary, they indicate that RS and topological analysis together may provide an effective combination to confirm or disprove a clinical diagnosis of AD. The next steps will include enlarging the dataset of CSF samples to validate the proposed method better and, possibly, to understand if topological data analysis could support the characterization of AD subtypes.Source: ISTI Working paper, 2309.03664, pp.1–7, 2023
Conti F., Banchelli M., Bessi V., Cecchi C., Chiti F., Colantonio S., D'Andrea C., De Angelis M., Moroni D., Nacmias B., Pascali M. A., Sorbi S., Matteini P.
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 19 subjects who received a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as of 5 pathological controls have been collected and analysed by Raman spectroscopy (RS). We investigated whether the raw and preprocessed Raman spectra could be used to distinguish AD from controls. First, we applied standard Machine Learning (ML) methods obtaining unsatisfactory results. Then, we applied ML to a set of topological descriptors extracted from raw spectra, achieving a very good classification accuracy (> 87%). Although our results are preliminary, they indicate that RS and topological analysis together may provide an effective combination to confirm or disprove a clinical diagnosis of AD. The next steps will include enlarging the dataset of CSF samples to validate the proposed method better and, possibly, to understand if topological data analysis could support the characterization of AD subtypes.Source: ISTI Working paper, 2309.03664, pp.1–7, 2023
See at:
arxiv.org | CNR ExploRA
2023
Contribution to book
Open Access
Introduction to machine learning in medicine
Buongiorno R., Caudai C., Colantonio S., Germanese D.
This chapter aimed to describe, as simply as possible, what Machine Learning is and how it can be used fruitfully in the medical field.Source: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, edited by Klontzas M.E., Fanni S.C., Neri E., pp. 39–68. Basel: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-25928-9_3
Metrics:
Buongiorno R., Caudai C., Colantonio S., Germanese D.
This chapter aimed to describe, as simply as possible, what Machine Learning is and how it can be used fruitfully in the medical field.Source: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, edited by Klontzas M.E., Fanni S.C., Neri E., pp. 39–68. Basel: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-25928-9_3
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | doi.org | CNR ExploRA
2023
Journal article
Open Access
Alzheimer disease detection from Raman spectroscopy of the cerebrospinal fluid via topological machine learning
Conti F., Banchelli M., Bessi V., Cecchi C., Chiti F., Colantonio S., D'Andrea C., De Angelis M., Moroni D., Nacmias B., Pascali M. A., Sorbi S., Matteini P.
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 19 subjects who received a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as of 5 pathological controls was collected and analyzed by Raman spectroscopy (RS). We investigated whether the raw and preprocessed Raman spectra could be used to distinguish AD from controls. First, we applied standard Machine Learning (ML) methods obtaining unsatisfactory results. Then, we applied ML to a set of topological descriptors extracted from raw spectra, achieving a very good classification accuracy (>87%). Although our results are preliminary, they indicate that RS and topological analysis may provide an effective combination to confirm or disprove a clinical diagnosis of AD. The next steps include enlarging the dataset of CSF samples to validate the proposed method better and, possibly, to investigate whether topological data analysis could support the characterization of AD subtypes.Source: Engineering proceedings (Basel) 51 (2023). doi:10.3390/engproc2023051014
DOI: 10.3390/engproc2023051014
Metrics:
Conti F., Banchelli M., Bessi V., Cecchi C., Chiti F., Colantonio S., D'Andrea C., De Angelis M., Moroni D., Nacmias B., Pascali M. A., Sorbi S., Matteini P.
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 19 subjects who received a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as of 5 pathological controls was collected and analyzed by Raman spectroscopy (RS). We investigated whether the raw and preprocessed Raman spectra could be used to distinguish AD from controls. First, we applied standard Machine Learning (ML) methods obtaining unsatisfactory results. Then, we applied ML to a set of topological descriptors extracted from raw spectra, achieving a very good classification accuracy (>87%). Although our results are preliminary, they indicate that RS and topological analysis may provide an effective combination to confirm or disprove a clinical diagnosis of AD. The next steps include enlarging the dataset of CSF samples to validate the proposed method better and, possibly, to investigate whether topological data analysis could support the characterization of AD subtypes.Source: Engineering proceedings (Basel) 51 (2023). doi:10.3390/engproc2023051014
DOI: 10.3390/engproc2023051014
Metrics:
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www.mdpi.com | CNR ExploRA
2023
Conference article
Open Access
Exploring the potentials and challenges of AI in supporting clinical diagnostics and remote assistance for the health and well-being of individuals
Berti A., Buongiorno R., Carloni G., Caudai C., Del Corso G., Germanese D., Pachetti E., Pascali M. A., Colantonio S.
Innovative technologies powered by Artificial Intelligence have the big potential to support new models of care delivery, disease prevention and quality of life promotion. The ultimate goal is a paradigm shift towards more personalized, accessible, effective, and sustainable care and health systems. Nevertheless, despite the advances in the field over the last years, the adoption and deployment of AI technologies remains limited in clinical practice and real-world settings. This paper summarizes the activities that a multidisciplinary research group within the Signals and Images Lab of the Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy is carrying out for exploring both the potential of AI in health and well-being as well as the challenges to their uptake in real-world settingsSource: Ital-IA 2023 - Italia Intelligenza Artificiale. Thematic Workshops of the 3rd CINI National Lab AIIS Conference on Artificial Intelligence - 2023, Pisa, Italy, 29-30/05/2023
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Berti A., Buongiorno R., Carloni G., Caudai C., Del Corso G., Germanese D., Pachetti E., Pascali M. A., Colantonio S.
Innovative technologies powered by Artificial Intelligence have the big potential to support new models of care delivery, disease prevention and quality of life promotion. The ultimate goal is a paradigm shift towards more personalized, accessible, effective, and sustainable care and health systems. Nevertheless, despite the advances in the field over the last years, the adoption and deployment of AI technologies remains limited in clinical practice and real-world settings. This paper summarizes the activities that a multidisciplinary research group within the Signals and Images Lab of the Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy is carrying out for exploring both the potential of AI in health and well-being as well as the challenges to their uptake in real-world settingsSource: Ital-IA 2023 - Italia Intelligenza Artificiale. Thematic Workshops of the 3rd CINI National Lab AIIS Conference on Artificial Intelligence - 2023, Pisa, Italy, 29-30/05/2023
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
See at:
ceur-ws.org | ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Conference article
Open Access
AI trustworthiness in prostate cancer imaging: a look at algorithmic and system transparency
Colantonio S., Berti A., Buongiorno R., Del Corso G., Pachetti E., Pascali M. A., Kalantzopoulos C., Kalokyri V., Kondylakis H., Tachos N., Fotiadis D., Giannini V., Mazzetti S., Regge D., Papanikolaou N., Marias K., Tsiknakis M.
A responsible approach to artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, grounded in sound scientific foundations, technical robustness, rigorous testing and validation, risk-based continuous monitoring and alignment with human values is imperative to guarantee their favourable impact and prevent any adverse effects they may have on individuals and communities. An essential aspect of responsible development is transparency, which constitutes a fundamental principle of the European approach towards artificial intelligence. Transparency can be achieved at different levels, such as data origin and use, system development, operation and usage. In this paper, we present the techniques implemented and delivered in the EU H2020 ProCAncer-I project to meet the transparency requirements at the different levels required.Source: IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Data Science and Engineering in Healthcare, Medicine and Biology, Malta, 7-9/12/2023
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Colantonio S., Berti A., Buongiorno R., Del Corso G., Pachetti E., Pascali M. A., Kalantzopoulos C., Kalokyri V., Kondylakis H., Tachos N., Fotiadis D., Giannini V., Mazzetti S., Regge D., Papanikolaou N., Marias K., Tsiknakis M.
A responsible approach to artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, grounded in sound scientific foundations, technical robustness, rigorous testing and validation, risk-based continuous monitoring and alignment with human values is imperative to guarantee their favourable impact and prevent any adverse effects they may have on individuals and communities. An essential aspect of responsible development is transparency, which constitutes a fundamental principle of the European approach towards artificial intelligence. Transparency can be achieved at different levels, such as data origin and use, system development, operation and usage. In this paper, we present the techniques implemented and delivered in the EU H2020 ProCAncer-I project to meet the transparency requirements at the different levels required.Source: IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Data Science and Engineering in Healthcare, Medicine and Biology, Malta, 7-9/12/2023
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
See at:
ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA
2023
Journal article
Open Access
Computer vision tasks for ambient intelligence in children's health
Germanese D., Colantonio S., Del Coco M., Carcagni P., Leo M.
Computer vision is a powerful tool for healthcare applications since it can provide objective diagnosis and assessment of pathologies, not depending on clinicians’ skills and experiences. It can also help speed-up population screening, reducing health care costs and improving the quality of service. Several works summarise applications and systems in medical imaging, whereas less work is devoted to surveying approaches for healthcare goals using ambient intelligence, i.e., observing individuals in natural settings. Even more, there is a lack of papers providing a survey of works exhaustively covering computer vision applications for children’s health, which is a particularly challenging research area considering that most existing computer vision technologies have been trained and tested only on adults. The aim of this paper is then to survey, for the first time in the literature, the papers covering children’s health-related issues by ambient intelligence methods and systems relying on computer vision.Source: Information (Basel) 14 (2023). doi:10.3390/info14100548
DOI: 10.3390/info14100548
Metrics:
Germanese D., Colantonio S., Del Coco M., Carcagni P., Leo M.
Computer vision is a powerful tool for healthcare applications since it can provide objective diagnosis and assessment of pathologies, not depending on clinicians’ skills and experiences. It can also help speed-up population screening, reducing health care costs and improving the quality of service. Several works summarise applications and systems in medical imaging, whereas less work is devoted to surveying approaches for healthcare goals using ambient intelligence, i.e., observing individuals in natural settings. Even more, there is a lack of papers providing a survey of works exhaustively covering computer vision applications for children’s health, which is a particularly challenging research area considering that most existing computer vision technologies have been trained and tested only on adults. The aim of this paper is then to survey, for the first time in the literature, the papers covering children’s health-related issues by ambient intelligence methods and systems relying on computer vision.Source: Information (Basel) 14 (2023). doi:10.3390/info14100548
DOI: 10.3390/info14100548
Metrics:
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Information | www.mdpi.com | CNR ExploRA
2023
Journal article
Open Access
Enhancing COVID-19 CT image segmentation: a comparative study of attention and recurrence in UNet models
Buongiorno R., Del Corso G., Germanese D., Colligiani L., Python L., Romei C., Colantonio S.
Imaging plays a key role in the clinical management of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as the imaging findings reflect the pathological process in the lungs. The visual analysis of High-Resolution Computed Tomography of the chest allows for the differentiation of parenchymal abnormalities of COVID-19, which are crucial to be detected and quantified in order to obtain an accurate disease stratification and prognosis. However, visual assessment and quantification represent a time-consuming task for radiologists. In this regard, tools for semi-automatic segmentation, such as those based on Convolutional Neural Networks, can facilitate the detection of pathological lesions by delineating their contour. In this work, we compared four state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks based on the encoder-decoder paradigm for the binary segmentation of COVID-19 infections after training and testing them on 90 HRCT volumetric scans of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 collected from the database of the Pisa University Hospital. More precisely, we started from a basic model, the well-known UNet, then we added an attention mechanism to obtain an Attention-UNet, and finally we employed a recurrence paradigm to create a Recurrent-Residual UNet (R2-UNet). In the latter case, we also added attention gates to the decoding path of an R2-UNet, thus designing an R2-Attention UNet so as to make the feature representation and accumulation more effective. We compared them to gain understanding of both the cognitive mechanism that can lead a neural model to the best performance for this task and the good compromise between the amount of data, time, and computational resources required. We set up a five-fold cross-validation and assessed the strengths and limitations of these models by evaluating the performances in terms of Dice score, Precision, and Recall defined both on 2D images and on the entire 3D volume. From the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that Attention-UNet outperforms the other models by achieving the best performance of 81,93%, in terms of 2D Dice score, on the test set. Additionally, we conducted statistical analysis to assess the performance differences among the models. Our findings suggest that integrating the recurrence mechanism within the UNet architecture leads to a decline in the model's effectiveness for our particular application.Source: JOURNAL OF IMAGING (2023). doi:10.3390/jimaging9120283
DOI: 10.3390/jimaging9120283
Metrics:
Buongiorno R., Del Corso G., Germanese D., Colligiani L., Python L., Romei C., Colantonio S.
Imaging plays a key role in the clinical management of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as the imaging findings reflect the pathological process in the lungs. The visual analysis of High-Resolution Computed Tomography of the chest allows for the differentiation of parenchymal abnormalities of COVID-19, which are crucial to be detected and quantified in order to obtain an accurate disease stratification and prognosis. However, visual assessment and quantification represent a time-consuming task for radiologists. In this regard, tools for semi-automatic segmentation, such as those based on Convolutional Neural Networks, can facilitate the detection of pathological lesions by delineating their contour. In this work, we compared four state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks based on the encoder-decoder paradigm for the binary segmentation of COVID-19 infections after training and testing them on 90 HRCT volumetric scans of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 collected from the database of the Pisa University Hospital. More precisely, we started from a basic model, the well-known UNet, then we added an attention mechanism to obtain an Attention-UNet, and finally we employed a recurrence paradigm to create a Recurrent-Residual UNet (R2-UNet). In the latter case, we also added attention gates to the decoding path of an R2-UNet, thus designing an R2-Attention UNet so as to make the feature representation and accumulation more effective. We compared them to gain understanding of both the cognitive mechanism that can lead a neural model to the best performance for this task and the good compromise between the amount of data, time, and computational resources required. We set up a five-fold cross-validation and assessed the strengths and limitations of these models by evaluating the performances in terms of Dice score, Precision, and Recall defined both on 2D images and on the entire 3D volume. From the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that Attention-UNet outperforms the other models by achieving the best performance of 81,93%, in terms of 2D Dice score, on the test set. Additionally, we conducted statistical analysis to assess the performance differences among the models. Our findings suggest that integrating the recurrence mechanism within the UNet architecture leads to a decline in the model's effectiveness for our particular application.Source: JOURNAL OF IMAGING (2023). doi:10.3390/jimaging9120283
DOI: 10.3390/jimaging9120283
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | www.mdpi.com | CNR ExploRA
2022
Journal article
Open Access
Horticultural therapy may reduce psychological and physiological stress in adolescents with anorexia nervosa: a pilot study
Curzio O., Billeci L., Belmonti V., Colantonio S., Cotrozzi L., De Pasquale C. F., Morales M. A., Nali C., Pascali M. A., Venturi F., Tonacci A., Zannoni N., Maestro S.
Studies in psychiatric populations have found a positive effect of Horticultural therapy (HCT) on reductions in stress levels. The main objective of the present pilot study was to evaluate the impact of the addition of HCT to conventional clinical treatment (Treatment as Usual, TaU) in a sample of six female adolescents with anorexia nervosa restricting type (AN-R), as compared to six AN-R patients, matched for sex and age, under TaU only. This is a prospective, non-profit, pilot study on patients with a previous diagnosis of AN-R and BMI < 16, recruited in 2020 in clinical settings. At enrolment (T0) and after treatment completion (TF), psychiatric assessment was performed. At T0, all the patients underwent: baseline electrocardiogram acquisition with a wearable chest strap for recording heart rate and its variability; skin conductance registration and thermal mapping of the individual's face. An olfactory identification test was administered both to evaluate the olfactory sensoriality and to assess the induced stress. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed to analyze modifications in clinical and physiological variables, considering time (T0, TF) as a within-subjects factor and group (experimental vs. control) as between-subjects factors. When the ANOVA was significant, post hoc analysis was performed by Paired Sample T-tests. Only in the HCT group, stress response levels, as measured by the biological parameters, improved over time. The body uneasiness level and the affective problem measures displayed a significant improvement in the HCT subjects. HCT seems to have a positive influence on stress levels in AN-R.Source: Nutrients 14 (2022). doi:10.3390/nu14245198
DOI: 10.3390/nu14245198
Metrics:
Curzio O., Billeci L., Belmonti V., Colantonio S., Cotrozzi L., De Pasquale C. F., Morales M. A., Nali C., Pascali M. A., Venturi F., Tonacci A., Zannoni N., Maestro S.
Studies in psychiatric populations have found a positive effect of Horticultural therapy (HCT) on reductions in stress levels. The main objective of the present pilot study was to evaluate the impact of the addition of HCT to conventional clinical treatment (Treatment as Usual, TaU) in a sample of six female adolescents with anorexia nervosa restricting type (AN-R), as compared to six AN-R patients, matched for sex and age, under TaU only. This is a prospective, non-profit, pilot study on patients with a previous diagnosis of AN-R and BMI < 16, recruited in 2020 in clinical settings. At enrolment (T0) and after treatment completion (TF), psychiatric assessment was performed. At T0, all the patients underwent: baseline electrocardiogram acquisition with a wearable chest strap for recording heart rate and its variability; skin conductance registration and thermal mapping of the individual's face. An olfactory identification test was administered both to evaluate the olfactory sensoriality and to assess the induced stress. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed to analyze modifications in clinical and physiological variables, considering time (T0, TF) as a within-subjects factor and group (experimental vs. control) as between-subjects factors. When the ANOVA was significant, post hoc analysis was performed by Paired Sample T-tests. Only in the HCT group, stress response levels, as measured by the biological parameters, improved over time. The body uneasiness level and the affective problem measures displayed a significant improvement in the HCT subjects. HCT seems to have a positive influence on stress levels in AN-R.Source: Nutrients 14 (2022). doi:10.3390/nu14245198
DOI: 10.3390/nu14245198
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | www.mdpi.com | CNR ExploRA
2022
Journal article
Open Access
Machine and deep learning prediction of prostate cancer aggressiveness using multiparametric MRI
E. Bertelli, L. Mercatelli, C. Marzi, E. Pachetti, M. Baccini, A. Barucci, S. Colantonio, L. Gherardini, L. Lattavo, M. A. Pascali, S. Agostini, V. Miele
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequent male malignancy and the assessment of PCa aggressiveness, for which a biopsy is required, is fundamental for patient management. Currently, multiparametric (mp) MRI is strongly recommended before biopsy. Quantitative assessment of mpMRI might provide the radiologist with an objective and noninvasive tool for supporting the decision-making in clinical practice and decreasing intra- and inter-reader variability. In this view, high dimensional radiomics features and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, along with Deep Learning (DL) methods working on raw images directly, could assist the radiologist in the clinical workflow. The aim of this study was to develop and validate ML/DL frameworks on mpMRI data to characterize PCas according to their aggressiveness. We optimized several ML/DL frameworks on T2w, ADC and T2w+ADC data, using a patient-based nested validation scheme. The dataset was composed of 112 patients (132 peripheral lesions with Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) score >= 3) acquired following both PI-RADS 2.0 and 2.1 guidelines. Firstly, ML/DL frameworks trained and validated on PI-RADS 2.0 data were tested on both PI-RADS 2.0 and 2.1 data. Then, we trained, validated and tested ML/DL frameworks on a multi PI-RADS dataset. We reported the performances in terms of Area Under the Receiver Operating curve (AUROC), specificity and sensitivity. The ML/DL frameworks trained on T2w data achieved the overall best performance. Notably, ML and DL frameworks trained and validated on PI-RADS 2.0 data obtained median AUROC values equal to 0.750 and 0.875, respectively, on unseen PI-RADS 2.0 test set. Similarly, ML/DL frameworks trained and validated on multi PI-RADS T2w data showed median AUROC values equal to 0.795 and 0.750, respectively, on unseen multi PI-RADS test set. Conversely, all the ML/DL frameworks trained and validated on PI-RADS 2.0 data, achieved AUROC values no better than the chance level when tested on PI-RADS 2.1 data. Both ML/DL techniques applied on mpMRI seem to be a valid aid in predicting PCa aggressiveness. In particular, ML/DL frameworks fed with T2w images data (objective, fast and non-invasive) show good performances and might support decision-making in patient diagnostic and therapeutic management, reducing intra- and inter-reader variability.Source: Frontiers in oncology 11 (2022). doi:10.3389/fonc.2021.802964
DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2021.802964
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Metrics:
E. Bertelli, L. Mercatelli, C. Marzi, E. Pachetti, M. Baccini, A. Barucci, S. Colantonio, L. Gherardini, L. Lattavo, M. A. Pascali, S. Agostini, V. Miele
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequent male malignancy and the assessment of PCa aggressiveness, for which a biopsy is required, is fundamental for patient management. Currently, multiparametric (mp) MRI is strongly recommended before biopsy. Quantitative assessment of mpMRI might provide the radiologist with an objective and noninvasive tool for supporting the decision-making in clinical practice and decreasing intra- and inter-reader variability. In this view, high dimensional radiomics features and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, along with Deep Learning (DL) methods working on raw images directly, could assist the radiologist in the clinical workflow. The aim of this study was to develop and validate ML/DL frameworks on mpMRI data to characterize PCas according to their aggressiveness. We optimized several ML/DL frameworks on T2w, ADC and T2w+ADC data, using a patient-based nested validation scheme. The dataset was composed of 112 patients (132 peripheral lesions with Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) score >= 3) acquired following both PI-RADS 2.0 and 2.1 guidelines. Firstly, ML/DL frameworks trained and validated on PI-RADS 2.0 data were tested on both PI-RADS 2.0 and 2.1 data. Then, we trained, validated and tested ML/DL frameworks on a multi PI-RADS dataset. We reported the performances in terms of Area Under the Receiver Operating curve (AUROC), specificity and sensitivity. The ML/DL frameworks trained on T2w data achieved the overall best performance. Notably, ML and DL frameworks trained and validated on PI-RADS 2.0 data obtained median AUROC values equal to 0.750 and 0.875, respectively, on unseen PI-RADS 2.0 test set. Similarly, ML/DL frameworks trained and validated on multi PI-RADS T2w data showed median AUROC values equal to 0.795 and 0.750, respectively, on unseen multi PI-RADS test set. Conversely, all the ML/DL frameworks trained and validated on PI-RADS 2.0 data, achieved AUROC values no better than the chance level when tested on PI-RADS 2.1 data. Both ML/DL techniques applied on mpMRI seem to be a valid aid in predicting PCa aggressiveness. In particular, ML/DL frameworks fed with T2w images data (objective, fast and non-invasive) show good performances and might support decision-making in patient diagnostic and therapeutic management, reducing intra- and inter-reader variability.Source: Frontiers in oncology 11 (2022). doi:10.3389/fonc.2021.802964
DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2021.802964
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | www.frontiersin.org | CNR ExploRA
2022
Report
Open Access
The complexity of Artificial Learning - CNR Foresight report
Bacco M., Colantonio S., Lepri S.
Artificial learning will significantly affect human life and science in the next decades. However, its basic principles of functioning are still theoretically not well understood. The aim of the workshop was to examine the relations and perspectives of the interaction between Data and Computer Sciences and Complexity theory on this matter.Source: ISTI Research Report, Foresight, 2022
Bacco M., Colantonio S., Lepri S.
Artificial learning will significantly affect human life and science in the next decades. However, its basic principles of functioning are still theoretically not well understood. The aim of the workshop was to examine the relations and perspectives of the interaction between Data and Computer Sciences and Complexity theory on this matter.Source: ISTI Research Report, Foresight, 2022
See at:
ISTI Repository | www.foresight.cnr.it | CNR ExploRA
2022
Contribution to book
Open Access
On the effectiveness of 3D vision transformers for the prediction of prostate cancer aggressiveness
Pachetti E., Colantonio S., Pascali M. A.
Prostate cancer is the most frequent male neoplasm in European men. To date, the gold standard for determining the aggressiveness of this tumor is the biopsy, an invasive and uncomfortable procedure. Before the biopsy, physicians recommend an investigation by multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging, which may serve the radiologist to gather an initial assessment of the tumor. The study presented in this work aims to investigate the role of Vision Transformers in predicting prostate cancer aggressiveness based only on imaging data. We designed a 3D Vision Transformer able to process volumetric scans, and we optimized it on the ProstateX-2 challenge dataset by training it from scratch. As a term of comparison, we also designed a 3D Convolutional Neural Network, and we optimized it in a similar fashion. The results obtained by our preliminary investigations show that Vision Transformers, even without extensive optimization and customization, can ensure an improved performance with respect to Convolutional Neural Networks and might be comparable with other more fine-tuned solutions.Source: Image Analysis and Processing, edited by Mazzeo P.L., Frontoni E., Sclaroff S., Distante C., pp. 317–328. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-13324-4_27
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Metrics:
Pachetti E., Colantonio S., Pascali M. A.
Prostate cancer is the most frequent male neoplasm in European men. To date, the gold standard for determining the aggressiveness of this tumor is the biopsy, an invasive and uncomfortable procedure. Before the biopsy, physicians recommend an investigation by multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging, which may serve the radiologist to gather an initial assessment of the tumor. The study presented in this work aims to investigate the role of Vision Transformers in predicting prostate cancer aggressiveness based only on imaging data. We designed a 3D Vision Transformer able to process volumetric scans, and we optimized it on the ProstateX-2 challenge dataset by training it from scratch. As a term of comparison, we also designed a 3D Convolutional Neural Network, and we optimized it in a similar fashion. The results obtained by our preliminary investigations show that Vision Transformers, even without extensive optimization and customization, can ensure an improved performance with respect to Convolutional Neural Networks and might be comparable with other more fine-tuned solutions.Source: Image Analysis and Processing, edited by Mazzeo P.L., Frontoni E., Sclaroff S., Distante C., pp. 317–328. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-13324-4_27
Project(s): ProCAncer-I
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA
2022
Contribution to book
Unknown
Artificial Intelligence for chest imaging against COVID-19: an insight into image segmentation methods
Buongiorno R., Germanese D., Colligiani L., Fanni S. C., Romei C., Colantonio S.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, emerged in late 2019 and soon developed as a pandemic leading to a world health crisis. Chest imaging examination plays a vital role in the clinical management and prognostic evaluation of COVID-19 since the imaging pathological findings reflect the inflammatory process of the lungs. Particularly, thanks to its highest sensitivity and resolution, Computer Tomography chest imaging serves well in the distinction of the different parenchymal patterns and manifestations of COVID-19. It is worth noting that detecting and quantifying such manifestations is a key step in evaluating disease impact and tracking its progression or regression over time. Nevertheless, the visual inspection or, even worse, the manual delimitation of such manifestations may be greatly time-consuming and overwhelming for radiologists, especially when pressed by the urgent needs of patient care. Image segmentation tools, powered by Artificial Intelligence, may sensibly reduce radiologists' workload as they may automate or, at least, facilitate the delineation of the pathological lesions and the other regions of interest for disease assessment. This delineation lays the basis for further diagnostic and prognostic analyses based on quantitative information extracted from the segmented lesions. This chapter overviews the Artificial Intelligence methods for the segmentation of chest Computed Tomography images. The focus is in particular on Deep Learning approaches, as these have lately become the mainstream approach to image segmentation. A novel method, leveraging attention-based learning, is presented and evaluated. Finally, a discussion of the potential, limitations, and still open challenges of the field concludes the chapter.Source: Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and COVID-19. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2022
Buongiorno R., Germanese D., Colligiani L., Fanni S. C., Romei C., Colantonio S.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, emerged in late 2019 and soon developed as a pandemic leading to a world health crisis. Chest imaging examination plays a vital role in the clinical management and prognostic evaluation of COVID-19 since the imaging pathological findings reflect the inflammatory process of the lungs. Particularly, thanks to its highest sensitivity and resolution, Computer Tomography chest imaging serves well in the distinction of the different parenchymal patterns and manifestations of COVID-19. It is worth noting that detecting and quantifying such manifestations is a key step in evaluating disease impact and tracking its progression or regression over time. Nevertheless, the visual inspection or, even worse, the manual delimitation of such manifestations may be greatly time-consuming and overwhelming for radiologists, especially when pressed by the urgent needs of patient care. Image segmentation tools, powered by Artificial Intelligence, may sensibly reduce radiologists' workload as they may automate or, at least, facilitate the delineation of the pathological lesions and the other regions of interest for disease assessment. This delineation lays the basis for further diagnostic and prognostic analyses based on quantitative information extracted from the segmented lesions. This chapter overviews the Artificial Intelligence methods for the segmentation of chest Computed Tomography images. The focus is in particular on Deep Learning approaches, as these have lately become the mainstream approach to image segmentation. A novel method, leveraging attention-based learning, is presented and evaluated. Finally, a discussion of the potential, limitations, and still open challenges of the field concludes the chapter.Source: Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and COVID-19. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2022
See at: CNR ExploRA
2022
Conference article
Open Access
Data models for an imaging bio-bank for colorectal, prostate and gastric cancer: the NAVIGATOR project
Berti A., Carloni G., Colantonio S., Pascali M. A., Manghi P., Pagano P., Buongiorno R., Pachetti E., Caudai C., Di Gangi D., Carlini E., Falaschi Z., Ciarrocchi E., Neri E., Bertelli E., Miele V., Carpi R., Bagnacci G., Di Meglio N., Mazzei M. A., Barucci A.
Researchers nowadays may take advantage of broad collections of medical data to develop personalized medicine solutions. Imaging bio-banks play a fundamental role, in this regard, by serving as organized repositories of medical images associated with imaging biomarkers. In this context, the NAVIGATOR Project aims to advance colorectal, prostate, and gastric oncology translational research by leveraging quantitative imaging and multi-omics analyses. As Project's core, an imaging bio-bank is being designed and implemented in a web-accessible Virtual Research Environment (VRE). The VRE serves to extract the imaging biomarkers and further process them within prediction algorithms. In our work, we present the realization of the data models for the three cancer use-cases of the Project. First, we carried out an extensive requirements analysis to fulfill the necessities of the clinical partners involved in the Project. Then, we designed three separate data models utilizing entity-relationship diagrams. We found diagrams' modeling for colorectal and prostate cancers to be more straightforward, while gastric cancer required a higher level of complexity. Future developments of this work would include designing a common data model following the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Standards. Indeed, a common data model would standardize the logical infrastructure of data models and make the bio-bank easily interoperable with other bio-banks.Source: BHI '22 - IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics, Ioannina, Greece, 27-30/09/2022
DOI: 10.1109/bhi56158.2022.9926910
Metrics:
Berti A., Carloni G., Colantonio S., Pascali M. A., Manghi P., Pagano P., Buongiorno R., Pachetti E., Caudai C., Di Gangi D., Carlini E., Falaschi Z., Ciarrocchi E., Neri E., Bertelli E., Miele V., Carpi R., Bagnacci G., Di Meglio N., Mazzei M. A., Barucci A.
Researchers nowadays may take advantage of broad collections of medical data to develop personalized medicine solutions. Imaging bio-banks play a fundamental role, in this regard, by serving as organized repositories of medical images associated with imaging biomarkers. In this context, the NAVIGATOR Project aims to advance colorectal, prostate, and gastric oncology translational research by leveraging quantitative imaging and multi-omics analyses. As Project's core, an imaging bio-bank is being designed and implemented in a web-accessible Virtual Research Environment (VRE). The VRE serves to extract the imaging biomarkers and further process them within prediction algorithms. In our work, we present the realization of the data models for the three cancer use-cases of the Project. First, we carried out an extensive requirements analysis to fulfill the necessities of the clinical partners involved in the Project. Then, we designed three separate data models utilizing entity-relationship diagrams. We found diagrams' modeling for colorectal and prostate cancers to be more straightforward, while gastric cancer required a higher level of complexity. Future developments of this work would include designing a common data model following the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Standards. Indeed, a common data model would standardize the logical infrastructure of data models and make the bio-bank easily interoperable with other bio-banks.Source: BHI '22 - IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics, Ioannina, Greece, 27-30/09/2022
DOI: 10.1109/bhi56158.2022.9926910
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | ieeexplore.ieee.org | CNR ExploRA
2022
Conference article
Open Access
Are active and assisted living applications addressing the main acceptance concerns of their beneficiaries? Preliminary insights from a scoping review
Colantonio S., Jovanovic M., Zdravevski E., Lameski P., Tellioglu H., Kampel M., Florez-Revuelta F.
Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies stand as a promising mean to respond to the big societal challenges related to health and social care. Nevertheless, despite their great potential and the recent boost ensured by the advances in Artificial Intelligence for data processing, the uptake in real-life settings of AAL technologies is still in its infancy. Several concerns seem to hinder the willingness of the targeted beneficiaries to integrate such technologies in their routines and living settings. Some studies and surveys have tried so far to identify and analyze these concerns and the factors that affect the immediate acceptance and long-term usage of AAL technologies, thus identifying accessibility, usability, privacy, safety, security and reliability as the core ones. Nevertheless, no attempts have been done yet to verify the reception of these analyses from a technological and implementation standpoint. This paper fills this gap by reporting the preliminary results of a scoping review of the AAL literature. The review investigates the solutions developed in the last five years that address various groups of beneficiaries and their concerns with respect to technology adoption. The results obtained aim to aid researchers, social and health care professionals, end users and technology providers understand the state of play of technological solutions, evaluation studies and the overall discussions that are appearing in the literature to address and respond to the end-users' concerns.Source: PETRA '22: 15th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, pp. 414–421, Corfù, Grecia, 29/06/2022 - 01/07/2022
DOI: 10.1145/3529190.3534753
Metrics:
Colantonio S., Jovanovic M., Zdravevski E., Lameski P., Tellioglu H., Kampel M., Florez-Revuelta F.
Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies stand as a promising mean to respond to the big societal challenges related to health and social care. Nevertheless, despite their great potential and the recent boost ensured by the advances in Artificial Intelligence for data processing, the uptake in real-life settings of AAL technologies is still in its infancy. Several concerns seem to hinder the willingness of the targeted beneficiaries to integrate such technologies in their routines and living settings. Some studies and surveys have tried so far to identify and analyze these concerns and the factors that affect the immediate acceptance and long-term usage of AAL technologies, thus identifying accessibility, usability, privacy, safety, security and reliability as the core ones. Nevertheless, no attempts have been done yet to verify the reception of these analyses from a technological and implementation standpoint. This paper fills this gap by reporting the preliminary results of a scoping review of the AAL literature. The review investigates the solutions developed in the last five years that address various groups of beneficiaries and their concerns with respect to technology adoption. The results obtained aim to aid researchers, social and health care professionals, end users and technology providers understand the state of play of technological solutions, evaluation studies and the overall discussions that are appearing in the literature to address and respond to the end-users' concerns.Source: PETRA '22: 15th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, pp. 414–421, Corfù, Grecia, 29/06/2022 - 01/07/2022
DOI: 10.1145/3529190.3534753
Metrics:
See at:
ISTI Repository | dl.acm.org | doi.org | CNR ExploRA