GSDA: Generative Adversarial Network-based Semi-Supervised Data Augmentation for Ultrasound Image Classification

TL;DR

GSDA is a GAN-based semi-supervised data augmentation technique that improves ultrasound image classification accuracy by generating high-quality images, addressing data scarcity issues in medical ultrasound analysis.

Contribution

The paper introduces GSDA, a novel GAN-based semi-supervised data augmentation method that enhances ultrasound image classification performance with limited data.

Findings

Achieves 97.9% accuracy on BUSI dataset with only 780 images.

Outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods.

Balances classification accuracy with computational efficiency.

Abstract

Medical Ultrasound (US) is one of the most widely used imaging modalities in clinical practice, but its usage presents unique challenges such as variable imaging quality. Deep Learning (DL) models can serve as advanced medical US image analysis tools, but their performance is greatly limited by the scarcity of large datasets. To solve the common data shortage, we develop GSDA, a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based semi-supervised data augmentation method. GSDA consists of the GAN and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The GAN synthesizes and pseudo-labels high-resolution, high-quality US images, and both real and synthesized images are then leveraged to train the CNN. To address the training challenges of both GAN and CNN with limited data, we employ transfer learning techniques during their training. We also introduce a novel evaluation standard that balances classification accuracy with computational time. We evaluate our method on the BUSI dataset and GSDA outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods. With the high-resolution and high-quality images synthesized, GSDA achieves a 97.9% accuracy using merely 780 images. Given these promising results, we believe that GSDA holds potential as an auxiliary tool for medical US analysis.