A Multi-Centric Anthropomorphic 3D CT Phantom-Based Benchmark Dataset for Harmonization
This addresses the challenge of AI harmonization in medical imaging for researchers, but it is incremental as it focuses on dataset creation rather than a new method.
The authors tackled the problem of poor generalization in AI-based CT analysis due to data distribution shifts from scanner variations by creating an open-source benchmark dataset of 1378 CT scans from 13 scanners across 8 institutions, providing baseline results and code to assess harmonization techniques.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced numerous opportunities for human assistance and task automation in medicine. However, it suffers from poor generalization in the presence of shifts in the data distribution. In the context of AI-based computed tomography (CT) analysis, significant data distribution shifts can be caused by changes in scanner manufacturer, reconstruction technique or dose. AI harmonization techniques can address this problem by reducing distribution shifts caused by various acquisition settings. This paper presents an open-source benchmark dataset containing CT scans of an anthropomorphic phantom acquired with various scanners and settings, which purpose is to foster the development of AI harmonization techniques. Using a phantom allows fixing variations attributed to inter- and intra-patient variations. The dataset includes 1378 image series acquired with 13 scanners from 4 manufacturers across 8 institutions using a harmonized protocol as well as several acquisition doses. Additionally, we present a methodology, baseline results and open-source code to assess image- and feature-level stability and liver tissue classification, promoting the development of AI harmonization strategies.