6533b7d0fe1ef96bd125ba53

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Generative Adversarial Networks in Cardiology

Jonathan AfilaloYoussef Skandarani EngrPierre-marc JodoinAlain Lalande

subject

Diagnostic Imagingmedicine.medical_specialtyModality (human–computer interaction)Artificial neural networkbusiness.industryTest data generationmedia_common.quotation_subjectCardiologyFidelityReal imageSynthetic dataField (computer science)WorkflowInternal medicineImage Processing Computer-AssistedmedicineCardiologyHumansNeural Networks ComputerCardiology and Cardiovascular Medicinebusinessmedia_common

description

A B S T R A C T Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are state-of-the-art neural network models used to synthesize images and other data. GANs brought a considerable improvement to the quality of synthetic data, quickly becoming the standard for data generation tasks. In this work, we summarize the applications of GANs in the field of cardiology, including generation of realistic cardiac images, electrocardiography signals, and synthetic electronic health records. The utility of GAN-generated data is discussed with respect to research, clinical care, and academia. Moreover, we present illustrative examples of our GAN-generated cardiac magnetic resonance and echocardiography images, showing the evolution in image quality across six different models, which has become almost indistinguishable from real images. Finally, we discuss future applications, such as modality translation or patient trajectory modeling. Moreover, we discuss the pending challenges that GANs need to overcome, namely their training dynamics, the medical fidelity or the data regulations and ethics questions, to become integrated in cardiology workflows.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjca.2021.11.003