Learning from a Few Shots: Data-efficient Cervical Vertebral Maturation Assessment

Helen Schneider, Aditya Parikh, Priya Priya, Maximilian Broß, Tom Verhofstadt, Anna Konermann, Rafet Sifa

Keywords: Few-shot Learning, Transfer Learning, Orthodontic, CVM Assessment

TL;DR: Data-efficient Deep Learning for CVM Assessment

Abstract:

The timing of treatment is a crucial decision in orthodontics. Initiating treatment during
the appropriate growth phase leads to optimal patient outcomes and can prevent prolonged
treatment durations. The most commonly used method for classifying growth phases is
cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) assessment, which categorizes CVM into six stages
based on the shape and size of the cervical vertebrae. Due to the complexity of manual CVM
analysis, it often falls short in performance when assessed visually. Deep learning methods
can assist physicians in classifying CVM stages, thus improving orthodontic workflows and
treatments. However, a significant challenge in deep learning-based CVM assessment is
the limited dataset volume, resulting from difficulties in data collection and annotation.
While small training datasets can greatly hinder the model’s generalization performance,
research on data-efficient training methods for CVM assessment is still lacking. To the best
of our knowledge, this paper is the first to evaluate the potential of few-shot learning and in-
domain transfer learning for CVM assessment. Specifically, we investigate the architectures
ResNet18 and MedSam-2D. Few-shot learning enhances classification performance by up
to 9%. Additionally, in-domain pre-training (using chest X-ray data) results in a significant
performance increase of up to 4%.

Primary Subject Area: Learning with Noisy Labels and Limited Data

Secondary Subject Area: Application: Dermatology

Paper Type: Validation or Application

Registration Requirement: Yes

Submission Number: 171