Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have certainly had a significant impact on the healthcare industry. In urology, AI has been widely adopted to deal with numerous disorders, irrespective of their severity, extending from conditions such as benign prostate hyperplasia to critical illnesses such as urothelial and prostate cancer. In this article, we aim to discuss how algorithms and techniques of artificial intelligence are equipped in the field of urology to detect, treat, and estimate the outcomes of urological diseases. Furthermore, we explain the advantages that come from using AI over any existing traditional methods.

Medical imaging is a complex process that capitulates images created by X-rays, ultrasound imaging, angiography, etc. During the imaging process, it also captures image noise during image acquisition, some of which are extremely corrosive, creating a disturbance that results in image degradation. The proposed work addresses the challenge to eliminate the corrosive Gaussian additive white noise from computed tomography (CT) images while preserving the fine details. The proposed approach is synthesized by amalgamating the concept of method noise with a deep learning-based framework of a convolutional neural network (CNN). The corrupted images are obtained by explicit addition of Gaussian additive white noise at multiple noise variance levels (σ = 10, 15, 20, 25). The denoised images obtained are then evaluated according to their visual quality and quantitative metrics, such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM). These metrics for denoised CT images are then compared with their respective values for the reference CT image. The average PSNR value of the proposed method is 25.82, the average SSIM value is 0.85, and the average computational time is 2.8760. To better understand the proposed approach’s effectiveness, an intensity profile of denoised and original medical images is plotted and compared. To further test the performance of the proposed methodology, the results obtained are also compared with that of other non-traditional methods. The critical analysis of the results shows the commendable efficiency of the proposed methodology in denoising the medical CT images corrupted by Gaussian noise. This approach can be utilized in multiple pragmatic areas of application in the field of medical image processing.

A number of recent papers have shown experimental evidence that suggests it is possible to build highly accurate deep neural network models to detect COVID-19 from chest X-ray images. In this paper, we show that good generalization to unseen sources has not been achieved. Experiments with richer data sets than have previously been used show models have high accuracy on seen sources, but poor accuracy on unseen sources. The reason for the disparity is that the convolutional neural network model, which learns features, can focus on differences in X-ray machines or in positioning within the machines, for example. Any feature that a person would clearly rule out is called a confounding feature. Some of the models were trained on COVID-19 image data taken from publications, which may be different than raw images. Some data sets were of pediatric cases with pneumonia where COVID-19 chest X-rays are almost exclusively from adults, so lung size becomes a spurious feature that can be exploited. In this work, we have eliminated many confounding features by working with as close to raw data as possible. Still, deep learned models may leverage source specific confounders to differentiate COVID-19 from pneumonia preventing generalizing to new data sources (i.e. external sites). Our models have achieved an AUC of 1.00 on seen data sources but in the worst case only scored an AUC of 0.38 on unseen ones. This indicates that such models need further assessment/development before they can be broadly clinically deployed. An example of fine-tuning to improve performance at a new site is given.

The current standard for assessing neonatal pain is discontinuous and inconsistent because it depends highly on the observers bias. These drawbacks can result in delayed intervention and inconsistent treatment of pain. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have gained much popularity in the last decades due to the wide range of its successful applications in medical image analysis, object and emotion recognition. In this paper, we investigated the use of a novel lightweight Neonatal Convolutional Neural Network as well as other popular CNN architectures for assessing neonatal pain. We experimented with various image augmentation techniques and evaluated the CNN architectures using two real-world datasets (COPE and NPAD) collected from neonates while being hospitalized in the intensive care unit. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority and efficiency of the novel network in assessing neonatal pain. They also suggest that the automatic recognition of neonatal pain using CNN networks is a viable and more efficient alternative to the current assessment standard.

The present study explores the efficacy of Machine Learning and Artificial Neural Networks in age assessment using the root length of the second and third molar teeth. A dataset of 1000 panoramic radiographs with intact second and third molars ranging from 12 to 25 years was archived. The length of the mesial and distal roots was measured using ImageJ software. The dataset was classified in three ways based on the age distribution: 2–Class, 3–Class, and 5–Class. We used Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), and Logistic Regression models to train, test, and analyze the root length measurements. The mesial root of the third molar on the right side was a good predictor of age. The SVM showed the highest accuracy of 86.4% for 2–class, 66% for 3–class, and 42.8% for 5–Class. The RF showed the highest accuracy of 47.6% for 5–Class. Overall the present study demonstrated that the Deep Learning model (fully connected model) performed better than the Machine Learning models, and the mesial root length of the right third molar was a good predictor of age. Additionally, a combination of different root lengths could be informative while building a Machine Learning model.

Computed tomography (CT) is used in medical applications to produce digital medical imaging of the human body and is acquired by the reconstruction process, where X-rays are the key component of CT imaging. The present coronavirus outbreak has spawned new medical device and technology research fields. COVID-19 most severely affects people with poor immunity; children and pregnant women are more susceptible. A CT scan will be required to assess the infection’s severity. As a result, to reduce the radiation levels significantly there is a need to minimize the CT scan noise. The quality of CT images may degrade in the form of noisy images due to low radiation levels. Hence, this study proposes a novel denoising methodology for COVID-19 CT images with a low dose, where a convolution neural network (CNN) and batch normalization were utilized for denoising. From different output metrics such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and image quality index (IQI), the accuracy of the resulting CT images was checked and evaluated, where IQI obtained the best results in terms of 99% accuracy. The findings were also compared with the outcomes of related recent research in the domain. After a detailed review of the findings, it was noted that the proposed algorithm in the present study performed better in comparision to the existing literature.