arXiv:2601.15490cs.CV2026-01

用视觉Transformer提升肺部X光片去偏能力,效果更好且不影响诊断。

Hybrid Vision Transformer_GAN Attribute Neutralizer for Mitigating Bias in Chest X_Ray Diagnosis

  • 用ViT替代原有U-Net,通过全局自注意力抑制性别年龄偏差
  • 在中等编辑强度下,性别识别准确率降至AUC 0.80,降低10个百分点
  • 诊断性能几乎不变,最差亚组表现仍保持AUC 0.70,适合临床部署

胸部X光分类器中的偏见常源于性别和年龄相关的捷径,导致少数群体系统性漏诊。现有基于卷积网络的像素空间去偏方法虽能缓解但无法彻底消除属性泄露。本研究评估在属性中性化框架中以视觉变换器(ViT)替代U-Net编码器的可行性。使用数据高效的DeiT-S模型在ChestX-ray14数据集上训练,生成11个编辑强度下的图像。独立AI判别器评估属性泄露,卷积神经网络(ConvNet)用于疾病预测。在中等编辑强度(alpha=0.5)下,ViT中性化器将患者性别识别的AUC降至约0.80,比原框架低约10个百分点,且训练仅需其一半周期。15种病变的宏平均ROC AUC与未编辑基线相差不足5个百分点,最差亚组AUC仍接近0.70。结果表明,全局自注意力的视觉模型可进一步抑制属性泄露而不牺牲临床效用,为更公平的胸部X光人工智能提供可行路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Bias in chest X-ray classifiers frequently stems from sex- and age-related shortcuts, leading to systematic underdiagnosis of minority subgroups. Previous pixel-space attribute neutralizers, which rely on convolutional encoders, lessen but do not fully remove this attribute leakage at clinically usable edit strengths. This study evaluates whether substituting the U-Net convolutional encoder with a Vision Transformer backbone in the Attribute-Neutral Framework can reduce demographic attribute leakage while preserving diagnostic accuracy. A data-efficient Image Transformer Small (DeiT-S) neutralizer was trained on the ChestX-ray14 dataset. Its edited images, generated across eleven edit-intensity levels, were evaluated with an independent AI judge for attribute leakage and with a convolutional neural network (ConvNet) for disease prediction. At a moderate edit level (alpha = 0.5), the Vision Transformer (ViT) neutralizer reduces patient sex-recognition area under the curve (AUC) to approximately 0.80, about 10 percentage points below the original framework's convolutional U-Net encoder, despite being trained for only half as many epochs. Meanwhile, macro receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC AUC) across 15 findings stays within five percentage points of the unedited baseline, and the worst-case subgroup AUC remains near 0.70. These results indicate that global self-attention vision models can further suppress attribute leakage without sacrificing clinical utility, suggesting a practical route toward fairer chest X-ray AI.

医学影像去偏ViTX光诊断

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