对比了联邦医疗影像中模型与数据适配的优劣,发现应根据领域差异类型选择策略。
When To Adapt? Adapting the Model or Data in Federated Medical Imaging

- 按领域异质性类型选择适配方式:外观差异用数据调和,结构差异用模型个性化。
- 在跨机构影像数据中,外观差异为主的任务(如肺结核分类)调和更有效,结构差异为主(如息肉分割)个性化更优。
- 为医疗联邦学习提供实用选型指南,适合研究者和临床开发者参考。
联邦学习使医疗机构能在不共享原始数据的前提下协作训练模型,但其性能常受限于客户端间的领域异质性。现有方法主要分为两类:模型侧个性化(适配模型参数)和数据侧调和(在输入层面减少客户端间差异)。尽管广泛应用,这些策略尚未被系统比较。本文在六种医学影像任务中进行综合研究:结肠息肉、皮肤病变、乳腺肿瘤分割,以及肺结核胸片、脑肿瘤和乳腺肿瘤分类,涵盖多种类型的领域偏移。我们在统一框架下评估了多种前沿调和与个性化方法。结果表明,适应策略的有效性取决于异质性的本质:当差异主要为外观特征时(如胸片分类),调和更有效;当差异为结构特征时(如息肉分割),个性化表现更佳。当客户端间差异较小时,两种策略表现相近。研究揭示,联邦医疗影像中适配效果由领域偏移的类型与程度决定,而非策略本身。我们提供了选择调和或个性化的实用指南,并指出未来结合两者的混合方法方向。代码已公开于 https://github.com/ChamaniS/WhenToAdapt。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Federated learning enables collaborative model training across medical institutions without sharing raw data, but its performance is often limited by domain heterogeneity across clients. Existing approaches to address this challenge fall into two main paradigms: model-side personalization, which adapts model parameters to each client, and data-side harmonization, which reduces inter-client variation at the input level. Despite their widespread use, these strategies have not been systematically compared. In this work, we conduct a comprehensive study across six medical imaging settings-colon polyp, skin lesion, and breast tumor segmentation, and tuberculosis CXR, brain tumor, and breast tumor classification-covering diverse types of domain shift. We evaluate a broad set of state-of-the-art harmonization and personalization methods under a unified framework. Our results reveal a conditional trade-off driven by the nature of heterogeneity: harmonization is more effective when variation is primarily appearance-based (e.g., CXR classification), while personalization performs better when differences are structural (e.g., colon polyp segmentation). When inter-client variation is limited, both strategies perform similarly. These findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of adaptation in federated medical imaging depends on the type and magnitude of domain shift rather than the strategy alone. We provide practical guidelines for selecting between harmonization and personalization and highlight directions for future hybrid approaches that combine both paradigms. Code is available at https://github.com/ChamaniS/WhenToAdapt.
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