用自生成形态特征约束乳腺超声分割与良恶性分类,提升跨数据集泛化能力。
Externally Validated Breast Ultrasound Segmentation via Multi-task Learning with BI-RADS-Consistent Morphological Priors
- 通过可微分的形态特征桥接分割与分类任务,引入BI-RADS相关形态指标作为一致性约束。
- 在四个独立数据集间交叉验证,分割Dice达0.764,分类AUC达0.818,优于单任务基线。
- 首次建立四数据集定向迁移完整基准,适合临床部署与多中心医学影像研究者参考。
乳腺超声分割模型的外部验证受限于内部训练-测试划分无法捕捉成像设备、采集协议和人群间的域偏移。本文提出一种新的多任务框架,联合实现乳腺超声分割与良恶性分类。核心创新在于可微分的形态-恶性度桥接机制:从预测的软分割掩码中计算病灶面积、边界粗糙度、紧凑性与纹理,并加权聚合为基于形态的恶性度评分,强制其与图像级分类器结果一致。据我们所知,这是首个将自生成的BI-RADS式形态特征作为端到端一致性目标的乳腺超声框架。同时,它是首个在四个独立数据集上报告所有12个方向外部迁移结果的2D B-mode多任务研究(每数据集训练,其余三组测试)。在匹配对比中,所提单模型在分割(DC: 0.764 vs. 0.740)与分类(AUC: 0.818 vs. 0.791)上均优于专用单任务基线。集成模型平均外部分割Dice达0.786,性能媲美使用EfficientNet-B7编码器的SAM方法,且同时输出恶性度预测。学习到的形态权重在四数据集中保持相同排序,边界粗糙度权重最高。该工作建立了首个完整的四数据集定向迁移基准,证明临床相关的形态一致性能在域偏移下协同提升分割与分类性能。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
External validation of breast ultrasound segmentation models remains limited because internal train--test splits do not capture domain shifts across imaging systems, acquisition protocols, and patient populations. We introduce a novel multi-task framework for breast ultrasound segmentation and malignancy classification. Its central methodological advance is a differentiable morphology-to-malignancy bridge: lesion area, boundary roughness, compactness, and texture are computed from the predicted soft segmentation mask, aggregated with learned weights into a morphology-based malignancy score, and constrained to agree with the image-level classifier. To our knowledge, this is the first breast ultrasound framework to use BI-RADS-inspired morphology derived from its own soft segmentation output as an end-to-end consistency target for malignancy classification. It is also the first 2D B-mode multi-task study to report every directed external transfer among four independent datasets: training on each dataset and testing on the other three yields 12 source--target pairs, assessed with single models and five-fold ensembles. In matched comparisons across all pairs, the proposed single-model configuration outperforms dedicated single-task baselines in segmentation (DC: 0.764 vs. 0.740) and malignancy classification (AUC: 0.818 vs. 0.791). The ensemble achieves a mean external DC of 0.786 and is competitive with SAM-based segmentation methods using an EfficientNet-B7 encoder while also predicting malignancy. The learned morphology weights retain the same ordering across all four datasets, with boundary roughness receiving the greatest weight. These results establish the first complete four-dataset directed benchmark for joint 2D breast ultrasound segmentation and malignancy classification and demonstrate that clinically grounded morphological consistency improves both tasks under domain shift.
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