Multimodal Generative AI for Interpreting Medical Images
1. Disease Classification from 2D Medical Images (e.g., Chest X-rays)
Objective
To automatically detect and classify thoracic diseases from single 2D
radiographs using deep learning models.
Input
● Grayscale or RGB chest X-ray image (commonly resized to 224×224
or 512×512 pixels).
Commonly Used Models
1. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs)
○ ResNet-50
○ DenseNet-121
○ EfficientNet
2. Vision Transformers (ViTs)
○ ViT-B/16 or ViT-L for long-range dependency modeling
Model Structure
Backbone:
● Deep CNN (e.g., DenseNet-121) extracts hierarchical features from
the image.
Classification Head:
● Global Average Pooling layer
● Fully Connected (Dense) Layer
● Sigmoid activation for multi-label output (e.g., prediction of multiple
diseases)
Datasets Used
● NIH ChestX-ray14
● CheXpert
● MIMIC-CXR
Evaluation Metrics
● Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC-ROC)
● F1-score, Precision, Recall
● Mean Average Precision (mAP)
3. Report Generation (Medical Transcription)
Objective
To generate diagnostic reports from the image features extracted by the
model, mimicking the style of human radiologists.
Techniques Used
1. Encoder-Decoder Architectures
○ CNN or ViT encodes the image
○ LSTM, GRU, or Transformer decodes the features into text
2. Pretrained Language Models
○ BERT-based: ClinicalBERT, BioBERT
○ GPT-based: BioGPT, GPT-2 fine-tuned on medical corpus
Common Models
● R2Gen (image-to-text)
● M2Trans (multi-modal transformer)
● Med-PaLM (multimodal large language model)
● LLaVA-Med (language–vision alignment model)
● GLoRIA (Vision–Language Pretraining for Radiology)
Input
● Image features (from CNN/Vision Transformer)
● Optional patient metadata or prior reports
Output
● Structured report (e.g., “No cardiomegaly. No pleural effusion.”)
● Can be used as a radiology draft or for automated transcription
Evaluation Metrics
● BLEU, METEOR, ROUGE (text similarity metrics)
● Clinical Efficacy metrics (e.g., precision of finding mentions)
Summary of Tools and Frameworks:
Task Tools / Libraries / Models
Image Classification ResNet, DenseNet, EfficientNet
(2D)
Image Classification 3D ResNet, 3D U-Net, V-Net
(3D)
Report Generation R2Gen, ClinicalBERT, BioGPT,
Med-PaLM
Frameworks PyTorch, TensorFlow, MONAI,
Hugging Face
Preprocessing OpenCV, SimpleITK, NiBabel,
pydicom
Model Summary:
2D Image Classification (e.g., Chest X-rays)
Model Type Examples Purpose
CNN (Convolutional ResNet-50, Extract image features,
Neural Network) DenseNet-121, classify diseases
EfficientNet
Vision Transformers ViT-B/16, Swin Handle long-range spatial
Transformer dependencies
Hybrid CNN + CoAtNet, ConvNeXt Combine CNN local detail
Transformer + ViT with Transformer global
context
Techniques:
Technique Description
Transfer Learning Pretrained models (on ImageNet or
RadImageNet) fine-tuned on medical data
Multi-label Classification Predict multiple diseases simultaneously
from one image (e.g., pneumonia + effusion)
Attention Mechanisms Focus on critical regions (e.g., lungs, heart)
in image for better accuracy
Class Activation Mapping Visual explanation of which part of the image
(CAM, Grad-CAM) influenced the model prediction
Data Augmentation Improve generalization (rotation, flips,
intensity variation)
Ensemble Learning Combine predictions from multiple models
for improved robustness
Tools & Frameworks:
Tool / Library Purpose
PyTorch / TensorFlow Building and training custom CNN or
Transformer models
MONAI Specialized deep learning toolkit for medical
imaging (3D and 2D)
TorchXRayVision Pretrained models and utilities for chest X-ray
classification
Hugging Face For Vision Transformers and multi-modal
Transformers models
pydicom / SimpleITK / Loading and preprocessing DICOM/3D
NiBabel imaging data
