Standardized Classification of Lumbar Spine Degeneration on Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reduces Intra- and Inter-subspecialty Variability

VIRD: An ensemble transfer learning to improve automatic stratification of types of lumbar intervertebral disc degeneration

“…For patients experiencing simultaneously two or more of such health conditions (i.e., comorbidity of two or more symptoms), the disease may advance to a more severe or more complicated stage, causing generally a situation where differentiated health care or urgent intervention/treatment is needed (Tang et al, 2022;Hussain et al, 2023). Statistics data indicate that globally approximately more than two-fths of individuals experience lower back pain in connection with the lumbar spine within their lifetime (Miskin et al, 2020;Miskin et al, 2022;Hussain et al, 2023;Jordan et al, 2015;Balzer et al, 2022). Degeneration of lumbar spine usually is associated with alterations to the structure of LID, damage to the ligaments, and impairment in the vertebras (Wu et al, 2016).…”

“…Radiography images using X-, gamma-rays, or other radiation techniques, computerized tomography scans (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are primarily exploited in detecting the disease of LID (Mousavi et al, 2021;Morbée et al, 2021). However, MRI is the recommended imaging modality for LIDrelated disease in comparison with CT and other imaging techniques (Morbée et al, 2021), and is widely utilized in planning treatment for patients with injured/damaged nerve roots, lower back pain, and signs of canal stenosis (Mousavi et al, 2021;Morbée et al, 2021;Miskin et al, 2022). Accurate ndings of the principal traits of MRI of LID are crucial for the preprocedural assessment of potential interventions for the lumbar spine such as rehabilitation training, injection-based treatment, and surgery (Jamaludin et al, 2017).…”

“…Prior work has demonstrated the impact of variability, both within the same appraiser and between appraisers, on the biased interpretation of LID-relative diseases (Miskin et al, 2020;Raheem et al, 2020;Miskin et al, 2022). Interpreter variability has been present in medical experts including radiologists and lumbar-spine clinicians.…”

“…Consequently, reliable and accurate identi cation of the severity and type of LID degeneration is laborious and challenging (Miskin et al, 2022;Mousavi et al, 2021). From the perspective of patients, physicians, and society, sub-optimal medical decisions resulting from diagnostic ambiguity are public concerns that need to be resolved (Jamaludin et al, 2017;Tang et al, 2022).…”

“…When evaluating the type and progression of LID degeneration, such variables potentially exert a crucial impact on the diagnosis of diseases and subsequent choice of treatment options (Raheem et al, 2021;Miskin et al, 2022;Khare et al, 2023). Speci cally, as shown in Fig.…”