skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Test-Time Training Can Close the Natural Distribution Shift Performance Gap in Deep Learning Based Compressed Sensing
Deep learning based image reconstruction methods outperform traditional methods. However, neural networks suffer from a performance drop when applied to images from a different distribution than the training images. For example, a model trained for reconstructing knees in accelerated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) does not reconstruct brains well, even though the same network trained on brains reconstructs brains perfectly well. Thus there is a distribution shift performance gap for a given neural network, defined as the difference in performance when training on a distribution P and training on another distribution Q, and evaluating both models on Q. In this work, we propose a domain adaptation method for deep learning based compressive sensing that relies on self-supervision during training paired with test-time training at inference. We show that for four natural distribution shifts, this method essentially closes the distribution shift performance gap for state-of-the-art architectures for accelerated MRI.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1816986
PAR ID:
10355951
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
International Conference on Machine Learning
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
    Deep neural networks give state-of-the-art accuracy for reconstructing images from few and noisy measurements, a problem arising for example in accelerated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, recent works have raised concerns that deep-learning-based image reconstruction methods are sensitive to perturbations and are less robust than traditional methods: Neural networks (i) may be sensitive to small, yet adversarially-selected perturbations, (ii) may perform poorly under distribution shifts, and (iii) may fail to recover small but important features in an image. In order to understand the sensitivity to such perturbations, in this work, we measure the robustness of different approaches for image reconstruction including trained and un-trained neural networks as well as traditional sparsity-based methods. We find, contrary to prior works, that both trained and un-trained methods are vulnerable to adversarial perturbations. Moreover, both trained and un-trained methods tuned for a particular dataset suffer very similarly from distribution shifts. Finally, we demonstrate that an image reconstruction method that achieves higher reconstruction quality, also performs better in terms of accurately recovering fine details. Our results indicate that the state-of-the-art deep-learning-based image reconstruction methods provide improved performance than traditional methods without compromising robustness. 
    more » « less
  2. Plug-and-Play Priors (PnP) is a well-known class of methods for solving inverse problems in computational imaging. PnP methods combine physical forward models with learned prior models specified as image denoisers. A common issue with the learned models is that of a performance drop when there is a distribution shift between the training and testing data. Test-time training (TTT) was recently proposed as a general strategy for improving the performance of learned models when training and testing data come from different distributions. In this paper, we propose PnP-Ttt as a new method for overcoming distribution shifts in PnP. PnP-TTT uses deep equilibrium learning (DEQ) for optimizing a self-supervised loss at the fixed points of PnP iterations. PnP-TTT can be directly applied on a single test sample to improve the generalization of PnP. We show through simulations that given a sufficient number of measurements, PnP-TTT enables the use of image priors trained on natural images for image reconstruction in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 
    more » « less
  3. PurposeTo develop a strategy for training a physics‐guided MRI reconstruction neural network without a database of fully sampled data sets. MethodsSelf‐supervised learning via data undersampling (SSDU) for physics‐guided deep learning reconstruction partitions available measurements into two disjoint sets, one of which is used in the data consistency (DC) units in the unrolled network and the other is used to define the loss for training. The proposed training without fully sampled data is compared with fully supervised training with ground‐truth data, as well as conventional compressed‐sensing and parallel imaging methods using the publicly available fastMRI knee database. The same physics‐guided neural network is used for both proposed SSDU and supervised training. The SSDU training is also applied to prospectively two‐fold accelerated high‐resolution brain data sets at different acceleration rates, and compared with parallel imaging. ResultsResults on five different knee sequences at an acceleration rate of 4 shows that the proposed self‐supervised approach performs closely with supervised learning, while significantly outperforming conventional compressed‐sensing and parallel imaging, as characterized by quantitative metrics and a clinical reader study. The results on prospectively subsampled brain data sets, in which supervised learning cannot be used due to lack of ground‐truth reference, show that the proposed self‐supervised approach successfully performs reconstruction at high acceleration rates (4, 6, and 8). Image readings indicate improved visual reconstruction quality with the proposed approach compared with parallel imaging at acquisition acceleration. ConclusionThe proposed SSDU approach allows training of physics‐guided deep learning MRI reconstruction without fully sampled data, while achieving comparable results with supervised deep learning MRI trained on fully sampled data. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract BackgroundMagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are known to suffer from a variety of acquisition artifacts as well as equipment‐based variations that impact image appearance and segmentation performance. It is still unclear whether a direct relationship exists between magnetic resonance (MR) image quality metrics (IQMs) (e.g., signal‐to‐noise, contrast‐to‐noise) and segmentation accuracy. PurposeDeep learning (DL) approaches have shown significant promise for automated segmentation of brain tumors on MRI but depend on the quality of input training images. We sought to evaluate the relationship between IQMs of input training images and DL‐based brain tumor segmentation accuracy toward developing more generalizable models for multi‐institutional data. MethodsWe trained a 3D DenseNet model on the BraTS 2020 cohorts for segmentation of tumor subregions enhancing tumor (ET), peritumoral edematous, and necrotic and non‐ET on MRI; with performance quantified via a 5‐fold cross‐validated Dice coefficient. MRI scans were evaluated through the open‐source quality control tool MRQy, to yield 13 IQMs per scan. The Pearson correlation coefficient was computed between whole tumor (WT) dice values and IQM measures in the training cohorts to identify quality measures most correlated with segmentation performance. Each selected IQM was used to group MRI scans as “better” quality (BQ) or “worse” quality (WQ), via relative thresholding. Segmentation performance was re‐evaluated for the DenseNet model when (i) training on BQ MRI images with validation on WQ images, as well as (ii) training on WQ images, and validation on BQ images. Trends were further validated on independent test sets derived from the BraTS 2021 training cohorts. ResultsFor this study, multimodal MRI scans from the BraTS 2020 training cohorts were used to train the segmentation model and validated on independent test sets derived from the BraTS 2021 cohort. Among the selected IQMs, models trained on BQ images based on inhomogeneity measurements (coefficient of variance, coefficient of joint variation, coefficient of variation of the foreground patch) and the models trained on WQ images based on noise measurement peak signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) yielded significantly improved tumor segmentation accuracy compared to their inverse models. ConclusionsOur results suggest that a significant correlation may exist between specific MR IQMs and DenseNet‐based brain tumor segmentation performance. The selection of MRI scans for model training based on IQMs may yield more accurate and generalizable models in unseen validation. 
    more » « less
  5. Deep learning (DL) models have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in the classification of diagnostic imaging in oncology. However, DL models for medical images can be compromised by adversarial images, where pixel values of input images are manipulated to deceive the DL model. To address this limitation, our study investigates the detectability of adversarial images in oncology using multiple detection schemes. Experiments were conducted on thoracic computed tomography (CT) scans, mammography, and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). For each dataset we trained a convolutional neural network to classify the presence or absence of malignancy. We trained five DL and machine learning (ML)-based detection models and tested their performance in detecting adversarial images. Adversarial images generated using projected gradient descent (PGD) with a perturbation size of 0.004 were detected by the ResNet detection model with an accuracy of 100% for CT, 100% for mammogram, and 90.0% for MRI. Overall, adversarial images were detected with high accuracy in settings where adversarial perturbation was above set thresholds. Adversarial detection should be considered alongside adversarial training as a defense technique to protect DL models for cancer imaging classification from the threat of adversarial images. 
    more » « less