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Recent developments in artificial intelligence have generated increasing interest to deploy automated image analysis for diagnostic imaging and large-scale clinical applications. However, inaccuracy from automated methods could lead to incorrect conclusions, diagnoses or even harm to patients. Manual inspection for potential inaccuracies is labor-intensive and time-consuming, hampering progress towards fast and accurate clinical reporting in high volumes. To promote reliable fully-automated image analysis, we propose a quality control-driven (QCD) segmentation framework. It is an ensemble of neural networks that integrate image analysis and quality control. The novelty of this framework is the selection of the most optimal segmentation based on predicted segmentation accuracy, on-the-fly. Additionally, this framework visualizes segmentation agreement to provide traceability of the quality control process. In this work, we demonstrated the utility of the framework in cardiovascular magnetic resonance T1-mapping - a quantitative technique for myocardial tissue characterization. The framework achieved near-perfect agreement with expert image analysts in estimating myocardial T1 value (r=0.987,p

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.media.2021.102029

Type

Journal article

Journal

Med Image Anal

Publication Date

07/2021

Volume

71

Keywords

Cardiovascular MRI, Ensemble neural network, Image quality assessment, Segmentation, Artificial Intelligence, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neural Networks, Computer, Quality Control, Reproducibility of Results