A Causality-Inspired Model for Intima-Media Thickening Assessment in Ultrasound Videos

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Gao, Shuo, Zhang, Jingyang, Xue, Jun, Yang, Meng, Chen, Yang, Zhou, Guangquan
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Gao, Shuo
Zhang, Jingyang
Xue, Jun
Yang, Meng
Chen, Yang
Zhou, Guangquan
author_facet Gao, Shuo
Zhang, Jingyang
Xue, Jun
Yang, Meng
Chen, Yang
Zhou, Guangquan
contents Carotid atherosclerosis represents a significant health risk, with its early diagnosis primarily dependent on ultrasound-based assessments of carotid intima-media thickening. However, during carotid ultrasound screening, significant view variations cause style shifts, impairing content cues related to thickening, such as lumen anatomy, which introduces spurious correlations that hinder assessment. Therefore, we propose a novel causal-inspired method for assessing carotid intima-media thickening in frame-wise ultrasound videos, which focuses on two aspects: eliminating spurious correlations caused by style and enhancing causal content correlations. Specifically, we introduce a novel Spurious Correlation Elimination (SCE) module to remove non-causal style effects by enforcing prediction invariance with style perturbations. Simultaneously, we propose a Causal Equivalence Consolidation (CEC) module to strengthen causal content correlation through adversarial optimization during content randomization. Simultaneously, we design a Causal Transition Augmentation (CTA) module to ensure smooth causal flow by integrating an auxiliary pathway with text prompts and connecting it through contrastive learning. The experimental results on our in-house carotid ultrasound video dataset achieved an accuracy of 86.93\%, demonstrating the superior performance of the proposed method. Code is available at \href{https://github.com/xielaobanyy/causal-imt}{https://github.com/xielaobanyy/causal-imt}.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_12418
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Causality-Inspired Model for Intima-Media Thickening Assessment in Ultrasound Videos
Gao, Shuo
Zhang, Jingyang
Xue, Jun
Yang, Meng
Chen, Yang
Zhou, Guangquan
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Carotid atherosclerosis represents a significant health risk, with its early diagnosis primarily dependent on ultrasound-based assessments of carotid intima-media thickening. However, during carotid ultrasound screening, significant view variations cause style shifts, impairing content cues related to thickening, such as lumen anatomy, which introduces spurious correlations that hinder assessment. Therefore, we propose a novel causal-inspired method for assessing carotid intima-media thickening in frame-wise ultrasound videos, which focuses on two aspects: eliminating spurious correlations caused by style and enhancing causal content correlations. Specifically, we introduce a novel Spurious Correlation Elimination (SCE) module to remove non-causal style effects by enforcing prediction invariance with style perturbations. Simultaneously, we propose a Causal Equivalence Consolidation (CEC) module to strengthen causal content correlation through adversarial optimization during content randomization. Simultaneously, we design a Causal Transition Augmentation (CTA) module to ensure smooth causal flow by integrating an auxiliary pathway with text prompts and connecting it through contrastive learning. The experimental results on our in-house carotid ultrasound video dataset achieved an accuracy of 86.93\%, demonstrating the superior performance of the proposed method. Code is available at \href{https://github.com/xielaobanyy/causal-imt}{https://github.com/xielaobanyy/causal-imt}.
title A Causality-Inspired Model for Intima-Media Thickening Assessment in Ultrasound Videos
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12418