Ten quick tips for computational analysis of medical images

Abstract

Medical imaging is a great asset for modern medicine, since it allows physicians to spatially interrogate a disease site, resulting in precise intervention for diagnosis and treatment, and to observe particular aspect of patients’ conditions that otherwise would not be noticeable. Computational analysis of medical images, moreover, can allow the discovery of disease patterns and correlations among cohorts of patients with the same disease, thus suggesting common causes or providing useful information for better therapies and cures. Machine learning and deep learning applied to medical images, in particular, have produced new, unprecedented results that can pave the way to advanced frontiers of medical discoveries. While computational analysis of medical images has become easier, however, the possibility to make mistakes or generate inflated or misleading results has become easier, too, hindering reproducibility and deployment. In this article, we provide ten quick tips to perform computational analysis of medical images avoiding common mistakes and pitfalls that we noticed in multiple studies in the past. We believe our ten guidelines, if taken into practice, can help the computational–medical imaging community to perform better scientific research that eventually can have a positive impact on the lives of patients worldwide.

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