Prototype-Enhanced Multi-View Learning for Thyroid Nodule Ultrasound Classification

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Yangmei, Zhang, Zhongyuan, Zhang, Xikun, Hao, Xinyu, Hou, Mingliang, Luo, Renqiang, Xu, Ziqi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Chen, Yangmei
Zhang, Zhongyuan
Zhang, Xikun
Hao, Xinyu
Hou, Mingliang
Luo, Renqiang
Xu, Ziqi
author_facet Chen, Yangmei
Zhang, Zhongyuan
Zhang, Xikun
Hao, Xinyu
Hou, Mingliang
Luo, Renqiang
Xu, Ziqi
contents Thyroid nodule classification using ultrasound imaging is essential for early diagnosis and clinical decision-making; however, despite promising performance on in-distribution data, existing deep learning methods often exhibit limited robustness and generalisation when deployed across different ultrasound devices or clinical environments. This limitation is mainly attributed to the pronounced heterogeneity of thyroid ultrasound images, which can lead models to capture spurious correlations rather than reliable diagnostic cues. To address this challenge, we propose PEMV-thyroid, a Prototype-Enhanced Multi-View learning framework that accounts for data heterogeneity by learning complementary representations from multiple feature perspectives and refining decision boundaries through a prototype-based correction mechanism with mixed prototype information. By integrating multi-view representations with prototype-level guidance, the proposed approach enables more stable representation learning under heterogeneous imaging conditions. Extensive experiments on multiple thyroid ultrasound datasets demonstrate that PEMV-thyroid consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods, particularly in cross-device and cross-domain evaluation scenarios, leading to improved diagnostic accuracy and generalisation performance in real-world clinical settings. The source code is available at https://github.com/chenyangmeii/Prototype-Enhanced-Multi-View-Learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_28315
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Prototype-Enhanced Multi-View Learning for Thyroid Nodule Ultrasound Classification
Chen, Yangmei
Zhang, Zhongyuan
Zhang, Xikun
Hao, Xinyu
Hou, Mingliang
Luo, Renqiang
Xu, Ziqi
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Thyroid nodule classification using ultrasound imaging is essential for early diagnosis and clinical decision-making; however, despite promising performance on in-distribution data, existing deep learning methods often exhibit limited robustness and generalisation when deployed across different ultrasound devices or clinical environments. This limitation is mainly attributed to the pronounced heterogeneity of thyroid ultrasound images, which can lead models to capture spurious correlations rather than reliable diagnostic cues. To address this challenge, we propose PEMV-thyroid, a Prototype-Enhanced Multi-View learning framework that accounts for data heterogeneity by learning complementary representations from multiple feature perspectives and refining decision boundaries through a prototype-based correction mechanism with mixed prototype information. By integrating multi-view representations with prototype-level guidance, the proposed approach enables more stable representation learning under heterogeneous imaging conditions. Extensive experiments on multiple thyroid ultrasound datasets demonstrate that PEMV-thyroid consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods, particularly in cross-device and cross-domain evaluation scenarios, leading to improved diagnostic accuracy and generalisation performance in real-world clinical settings. The source code is available at https://github.com/chenyangmeii/Prototype-Enhanced-Multi-View-Learning.
title Prototype-Enhanced Multi-View Learning for Thyroid Nodule Ultrasound Classification
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28315