Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Barr, Austin A., Karmur, Brij S., Winder, Anthony J., Guo, Eddie, Lysack, John T., Scott, James N., Morrish, William F., Eesa, Muneer, Willson, Morgan, Cadotte, David W., Yang, Michael M. H., Chan, Ian Y. M., Lama, Sanju, Sutherland, Garnette R.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22166
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911231293521920
author Barr, Austin A.
Karmur, Brij S.
Winder, Anthony J.
Guo, Eddie
Lysack, John T.
Scott, James N.
Morrish, William F.
Eesa, Muneer
Willson, Morgan
Cadotte, David W.
Yang, Michael M. H.
Chan, Ian Y. M.
Lama, Sanju
Sutherland, Garnette R.
author_facet Barr, Austin A.
Karmur, Brij S.
Winder, Anthony J.
Guo, Eddie
Lysack, John T.
Scott, James N.
Morrish, William F.
Eesa, Muneer
Willson, Morgan
Cadotte, David W.
Yang, Michael M. H.
Chan, Ian Y. M.
Lama, Sanju
Sutherland, Garnette R.
contents Machine learning in neurosurgery is limited by challenges in assembling large, high-quality imaging datasets. Synthetic data offers a scalable, privacy-preserving solution. We evaluated the feasibility of generating realistic lateral cervical spine radiographs using a denoising diffusion probabilistic model (DDPM) trained on 4,963 images from the Cervical Spine X-ray Atlas. Model performance was monitored via training/validation loss and Frechet inception distance, and synthetic image quality was assessed in a blinded "clinical Turing test" with six neuroradiologists and two spine-fellowship trained neurosurgeons. Experts reviewed 50 quartets containing one real and three synthetic images, identifying the real image and rating realism on a 4-point Likert scale. Experts correctly identified the real image in 29% of trials (Fleiss' kappa=0.061). Mean realism scores were comparable between real (3.323) and synthetic images (3.228, 3.258, and 3.320; p=0.383, 0.471, 1.000). Nearest-neighbor analysis found no evidence of memorization. We also provide a dataset of 20,063 synthetic radiographs. These results demonstrate that DDPM-generated cervical spine X-rays are statistically indistinguishable in realism and quality from real clinical images, offering a novel approach to creating large-scale neuroimaging datasets for ML applications in landmarking, segmentation, and classification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_22166
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Expert Validation of Synthetic Cervical Spine Radiographs Generated with a Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model
Barr, Austin A.
Karmur, Brij S.
Winder, Anthony J.
Guo, Eddie
Lysack, John T.
Scott, James N.
Morrish, William F.
Eesa, Muneer
Willson, Morgan
Cadotte, David W.
Yang, Michael M. H.
Chan, Ian Y. M.
Lama, Sanju
Sutherland, Garnette R.
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Machine learning in neurosurgery is limited by challenges in assembling large, high-quality imaging datasets. Synthetic data offers a scalable, privacy-preserving solution. We evaluated the feasibility of generating realistic lateral cervical spine radiographs using a denoising diffusion probabilistic model (DDPM) trained on 4,963 images from the Cervical Spine X-ray Atlas. Model performance was monitored via training/validation loss and Frechet inception distance, and synthetic image quality was assessed in a blinded "clinical Turing test" with six neuroradiologists and two spine-fellowship trained neurosurgeons. Experts reviewed 50 quartets containing one real and three synthetic images, identifying the real image and rating realism on a 4-point Likert scale. Experts correctly identified the real image in 29% of trials (Fleiss' kappa=0.061). Mean realism scores were comparable between real (3.323) and synthetic images (3.228, 3.258, and 3.320; p=0.383, 0.471, 1.000). Nearest-neighbor analysis found no evidence of memorization. We also provide a dataset of 20,063 synthetic radiographs. These results demonstrate that DDPM-generated cervical spine X-rays are statistically indistinguishable in realism and quality from real clinical images, offering a novel approach to creating large-scale neuroimaging datasets for ML applications in landmarking, segmentation, and classification.
title Expert Validation of Synthetic Cervical Spine Radiographs Generated with a Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22166