Hallucination Index: An Image Quality Metric for Generative Reconstruction Models

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tivnan, Matthew, Yoon, Siyeop, Chen, Zhennong, Li, Xiang, Wu, Dufan, Li, Quanzheng
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866909260136316928
author Tivnan, Matthew
Yoon, Siyeop
Chen, Zhennong
Li, Xiang
Wu, Dufan
Li, Quanzheng
author_facet Tivnan, Matthew
Yoon, Siyeop
Chen, Zhennong
Li, Xiang
Wu, Dufan
Li, Quanzheng
contents Generative image reconstruction algorithms such as measurement conditioned diffusion models are increasingly popular in the field of medical imaging. These powerful models can transform low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) inputs into outputs with the appearance of high SNR. However, the outputs can have a new type of error called hallucinations. In medical imaging, these hallucinations may not be obvious to a Radiologist but could cause diagnostic errors. Generally, hallucination refers to error in estimation of object structure caused by a machine learning model, but there is no widely accepted method to evaluate hallucination magnitude. In this work, we propose a new image quality metric called the hallucination index. Our approach is to compute the Hellinger distance from the distribution of reconstructed images to a zero hallucination reference distribution. To evaluate our approach, we conducted a numerical experiment with electron microscopy images, simulated noisy measurements, and applied diffusion based reconstructions. We sampled the measurements and the generative reconstructions repeatedly to compute the sample mean and covariance. For the zero hallucination reference, we used the forward diffusion process applied to ground truth. Our results show that higher measurement SNR leads to lower hallucination index for the same apparent image quality. We also evaluated the impact of early stopping in the reverse diffusion process and found that more modest denoising strengths can reduce hallucination. We believe this metric could be useful for evaluation of generative image reconstructions or as a warning label to inform radiologists about the degree of hallucinations in medical images.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12780
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hallucination Index: An Image Quality Metric for Generative Reconstruction Models
Tivnan, Matthew
Yoon, Siyeop
Chen, Zhennong
Li, Xiang
Wu, Dufan
Li, Quanzheng
Medical Physics
Image and Video Processing
Generative image reconstruction algorithms such as measurement conditioned diffusion models are increasingly popular in the field of medical imaging. These powerful models can transform low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) inputs into outputs with the appearance of high SNR. However, the outputs can have a new type of error called hallucinations. In medical imaging, these hallucinations may not be obvious to a Radiologist but could cause diagnostic errors. Generally, hallucination refers to error in estimation of object structure caused by a machine learning model, but there is no widely accepted method to evaluate hallucination magnitude. In this work, we propose a new image quality metric called the hallucination index. Our approach is to compute the Hellinger distance from the distribution of reconstructed images to a zero hallucination reference distribution. To evaluate our approach, we conducted a numerical experiment with electron microscopy images, simulated noisy measurements, and applied diffusion based reconstructions. We sampled the measurements and the generative reconstructions repeatedly to compute the sample mean and covariance. For the zero hallucination reference, we used the forward diffusion process applied to ground truth. Our results show that higher measurement SNR leads to lower hallucination index for the same apparent image quality. We also evaluated the impact of early stopping in the reverse diffusion process and found that more modest denoising strengths can reduce hallucination. We believe this metric could be useful for evaluation of generative image reconstructions or as a warning label to inform radiologists about the degree of hallucinations in medical images.
title Hallucination Index: An Image Quality Metric for Generative Reconstruction Models
topic Medical Physics
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12780