Haoxu Huang

Haoxu Huang, Li Niu

Image harmonization targets at adjusting the foreground in a composite image to make it compatible with the background, producing a more realistic and harmonious image. Training deep image harmonization network requires abundant training data, but it is extremely difficult to acquire training pairs of composite images and ground-truth harmonious images. Therefore, existing works turn to adjust the foreground appearance in a real image to create a synthetic composite image. However, such adjustment may not faithfully reflect the natural illumination change of foreground. In this work, we explore a novel transitive way to construct image harmonization dataset. Specifically, based on the existing datasets with recorded illumination information, we first convert the foreground in a real image to the standard illumination condition, and then convert it to another illumination condition, which is combined with the original background to form a synthetic composite image. In this manner, we construct an image harmonization dataset called ccHarmony, which is named after color checker (cc). The dataset is available at https://github.com/bcmi/Image-Harmonization-Dataset-ccHarmony.

Weicheng Zhu, Haoxu Huang, Huanze Tang et al.

Head computed tomography (CT) imaging is a widely-used imaging modality with multitudes of medical indications, particularly in assessing pathology of the brain, skull, and cerebrovascular system. It is commonly the first-line imaging in neurologic emergencies given its rapidity of image acquisition, safety, cost, and ubiquity. Deep learning models may facilitate detection of a wide range of diseases. However, the scarcity of high-quality labels and annotations, particularly among less common conditions, significantly hinders the development of powerful models. To address this challenge, we introduce FM-CT: a Foundation Model for Head CT for generalizable disease detection, trained using self-supervised learning. Our approach pre-trains a deep learning model on a large, diverse dataset of 361,663 non-contrast 3D head CT scans without the need for manual annotations, enabling the model to learn robust, generalizable features. To investigate the potential of self-supervised learning in head CT, we employed both discrimination with self-distillation and masked image modeling, and we construct our model in 3D rather than at the slice level (2D) to exploit the structure of head CT scans more comprehensively and efficiently. The model's downstream classification performance is evaluated using internal and three external datasets, encompassing both in-distribution (ID) and out-of-distribution (OOD) data. Our results demonstrate that the self-supervised foundation model significantly improves performance on downstream diagnostic tasks compared to models trained from scratch and previous 3D CT foundation models on scarce annotated datasets. This work highlights the effectiveness of self-supervised learning in medical imaging and sets a new benchmark for head CT image analysis in 3D, enabling broader use of artificial intelligence for head CT-based diagnosis.

Haoxu Huang, Cem M. Deniz, Kyunghyun Cho et al.

Chest X-ray imaging is a widely accessible and non-invasive diagnostic tool for detecting thoracic abnormalities. While numerous AI models assist radiologists in interpreting these images, most overlook patients' historical data. To bridge this gap, we introduce Temporal MIMIC dataset, which integrates five years of patient history, including radiographic scans and reports from MIMIC-CXR and MIMIC-IV, encompassing 12,221 patients and thirteen pathologies. Building on this, we present HIST-AID, a framework that enhances automatic diagnostic accuracy using historical reports. HIST-AID emulates the radiologist's comprehensive approach, leveraging historical data to improve diagnostic accuracy. Our experiments demonstrate significant improvements, with AUROC increasing by 6.56% and AUPRC by 9.51% compared to models that rely solely on radiographic scans. These gains were consistently observed across diverse demographic groups, including variations in gender, age, and racial categories. We show that while recent data boost performance, older data may reduce accuracy due to changes in patient conditions. Our work paves the potential of incorporating historical data for more reliable automatic diagnosis, providing critical support for clinical decision-making.