Multi-label chest X-ray image classification via category-wise residual attention learning

摘要

This paper considers the problem of multi-label thorax disease classification on chest X-ray images. Identifying one or more pathologies from a chest X-ray image is often hindered by the pathologies unrelated to the targets. In this paper, we address the above problem by proposing a category-wise residual attention learning (CRAL) framework. CRAL predicts the presence of multiple pathologies in a class-specific attentive view. It aims to suppress the obstacles of irrelevant classes by endowing small weights to the corresponding feature representation. Meanwhile, the relevant features would be strengthened by assigning larger weights. Specifically, the proposed framework consists of two modules: feature embedding module and attention learning module. The feature embedding module learns high-level features with a convolutional neural network (CNN) while the attention learning module focuses on exploring the assignment scheme of different categories. The attention module can be flexibly integrated into any feature embedding networks with end-to-end training. The comprehensive experiments are conducted on the Chest X-ray14 dataset. CRAL yields the average AUC score of 0.816 which is a new state of the art. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.