2025/05/07 by Yuning Du, Du, Yuning, Jingshuai Liu +5
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Advanced Bandit Algorithms Research #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Image and Video Processing (eess.IV) #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Reinforcement Learning in Robotics #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.04586
openalex publication_date 2025/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Despite the superior diagnostic capability of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), its use as a Point-of-Care (PoC) device remains limited by high cost and complexity. To enable such a future by reducing the magnetic field strength, one key approach will be to improve sampling strategies. Previous work has shown that it is possible to make diagnostic decisions directly from k-space with fewer samples. Such work shows that single diagnostic decisions can be made, but if we aspire to see MRI as a true PoC, multiple and sequential decisions are necessary while minimizing the number of samples acquired. We present a novel multi-objective reinforcement learning framework enabling comprehensive, sequential, diagnostic evaluation from undersampled k-space data. Our approach during inference actively adapts to sequential decisions to optimally sample. To achieve this, we introduce a training methodology that identifies the samples that contribute the best to each diagnostic objective using a step-wise weighting reward function. We evaluate our approach in two sequential knee pathology assessment tasks: ACL sprain detection and cartilage thickness loss assessment. Our framework achieves diagnostic performance competitive with various policy-based benchmarks on disease detection, severity quantification, and overall sequential diagnosis, while substantially saving k-space samples. Our approach paves the way for the future of MRI as a comprehensive and affordable PoC device. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/vios-s/MRISequentialActiveSampling