Improved hypertensive stroke classification based on multi-scale feature fusion of head axial CT angiogram and multimodal learning.

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Abstract

Strokes are severe cardiovascular and circulatory diseases with two main types: ischemic and hemorrhagic. Clinically, brain images such as computed tomography (CT) and computed tomography angiography (CTA) are widely used to recognize stroke types. However, few studies have combined imaging and clinical data to classify stroke or consider a factor as an Independent etiology.In this work, we propose a classification model that automatically distinguishes stroke types with hypertension as an independent etiology based on brain imaging and clinical data. We first present a preprocessing workflow for head axial CT angiograms, including noise reduction and feature enhancement of the images, followed by an extraction of regions of interest. Next, we develop a multi-scale feature fusion model that combines the location information of position features and the semantic information of deep features. Furthermore, we integrate brain imaging with clinical information through a multimodal learning model to achieve more reliable results.Experimental results show our proposed models outperform state-of-the-art models on real imaging and clinical data, which reveals the potential of multimodal learning in brain disease diagnosis.The proposed methodologies can be extended to create AI-driven diagnostic assistance technology for categorizing strokes.Copyright © 2024 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica e Sanitaria. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.