Event-Based Clinical Finding Extraction from Radiology Reports with Pre-trained Language Model

A vision attention driven Language framework for medical report generation

This study introduces the Medical Vision Attention Generation (MedVAG) model, a novel framework designed to facilitate the automated generation of medical reports. MedVAG integrates Vision Transformer (ViT)-based visual feature extraction and GPT-2 language modeling, enhanced by graph-based feature fusion and multiple attention mechanisms (co-attention, cross-attention, memory-guided attention), to ensure semantic coherence and diagnostic accuracy. Evaluated on IU X-Ray and COV-CTR datasets, the model achieved state-of-the-art performance across natural language generation metrics (BLEU, METEOR, ROUGE, CIDEr) and clinical effectiveness measures. Ablation studies highlighted the critical role of attention mechanisms and feature fusion in aligning visual and textual features. MedVAG demonstrates strong potential as an assistive technology, aiming to support radiologists by reducing workload and enhancing diagnostic accuracy.

A scoping review of large language model based approaches for information extraction from radiology reports

Radiological imaging is a globally prevalent diagnostic method, yet the free text contained in radiology reports is not frequently used for secondary purposes. Natural Language Processing can provide structured data retrieved from these reports. This paper provides a summary of the current state of research on Large Language Model (LLM) based approaches for information extraction (IE) from radiology reports. We conduct a scoping review that follows the PRISMA-ScR guideline. Queries of five databases were conducted on August 1st 2023. Among the 34 studies that met inclusion criteria, only pre-transformer and encoder-based models are described. External validation shows a general performance decrease, although LLMs might improve generalizability of IE approaches. Reports related to CT and MRI examinations, as well as thoracic reports, prevail. Most common challenges reported are missing validation on external data and augmentation of the described methods. Different reporting granularities affect the comparability and transparency of approaches.

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers in Radiology: A Systematic Review of Natural Language Processing Applications

INTRODUCTION

Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), introduced in 2018, has revolutionized natural language processing. Its bidirectional understanding of word context has enabled innovative applications, notably in radiology. This study aimed to assess BERT's influence and applications within the radiologic domain.

METHODS

Adhering to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we conducted a systematic review, searching PubMed for literature on BERT-based models and natural language processing in radiology from January 1, 2018, to February 12, 2023. The search encompassed keywords related to generative models, transformer architecture, and various imaging techniques.

RESULTS

Of 597 results, 30 met our inclusion criteria. The remaining were unrelated to radiology or did not use BERT-based models. The included studies were retrospective, with 14 published in 2022. The primary focus was on classification and information extraction from radiology reports, with x-rays as the prevalent imaging modality. Specific investigations included automatic CT protocol assignment and deep learning applications in chest x-ray interpretation.

CONCLUSION

This review underscores the primary application of BERT in radiology for report classification. It also reveals emerging BERT applications for protocol assignment and report generation. As BERT technology advances, we foresee further innovative applications. Its implementation in radiology holds potential for enhancing diagnostic precision, expediting report generation, and optimizing patient care.

Language model and its interpretability in biomedicine: A scoping review

With advancements in large language models, artificial intelligence (AI) is undergoing a paradigm shift where AI models can be repurposed with minimal effort across various downstream tasks. This provides great promise in learning generally useful representations from biomedical corpora, at scale, which would empower AI solutions in healthcare and biomedical research. Nonetheless, our understanding of how they work, when they fail, and what they are capable of remains underexplored due to their emergent properties. Consequently, there is a need to comprehensively examine the use of language models in biomedicine. This review aims to summarize existing studies of language models in biomedicine and identify topics ripe for future research, along with the technical and analytical challenges w.r.t. interpretability. We expect this review to help researchers and practitioners better understand the landscape of language models in biomedicine and what methods are available to enhance the interpretability of their models.