Qian Liu

Dr. Qian Liu

orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

7Years (2020-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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24 November 2020 in IEEE Access
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
QLQian Liu
Qian Liu
Carson LeungCarson Leung
Carson Leung
PHPingzhao Hu
Pingzhao Hu
COVID-19 is a newly identified disease, which is very contagious and has been rapidly spreading across different countries around the world, calling for rapid and accurate diagnosis tools. Chest CT imaging has been widely used in clinical practice for disease diagnosis, but image reading is still a time-consuming work. We aim to integrate an image preprocessing technology for anomaly detection with supervised deep learning for chest CT imaging-based COVID-19 diagnosis. In this study, a matrix profile technique was introduced to CT image anomaly detection in two levels. At one-dimensional level, CT images were simply flatted and transformed to a one-dimensional vector so that the matrix profile algorithm could be implemented for them directly. At two-dimensional level,a matrix profile was calculated in a sliding window way for every segment in the image. An anomaly severity score (CT-SS) was calculated, and the difference of the CT-SS between the COVID-19 CT images and Non-COVID-19 CT images was tested. A sparse anomaly mask was calculated and applied to penalize the pixel values of each image. The anomaly weighted images were then used to train standard DenseNet deep learning models to distinguish the COVID-19 CT from Non-COVID-19 CT images. A VGG19 model was used as a baseline model for comparison. Although extra finetuning needs to be done manually, the one-dimensional matrix profile method could identify the anomalies successfully. Using the two-dimensional matrix profiling method, CT-SS and anomaly weighted image can be successfully generated for each image. The CT-SS significantly differed among the COVID-19 CT images and Non-COVID-19 CT images (p - value < 0.05). Furthermore, we identified a potential causal association between the number of underlying diseases of a COVID-19 patient and the severity of the disease through statistical mediation analysis. Compared to the raw images, the anomaly weighted images showed generally better performance in training the DenseNet models with different architectures for diagnosing COVID-19, which was validated using two publicly available COVID-19 lung CT image datasets. The metric Area Under the Curve(AUC) on one dataset were 0.7799(weighted)vs. 0.7391(unweighted), 0.7812(weighted) vs. 0.7410(unweighted), 0.7780(weighted) vs. 0.7399(unweighted), 0.7045(weighted) vs. 0.6910(unweighted) for DenseNet121, DenseNet169, DenseNet201, and the baseline model VGG19, respectively. The same trend was observed using another independent dataset. The significant results revealed the critical value of using this existing state-of-the-art algorithm for image anomaly detection. Furthermore, the end-to-end model structure has the potential to work as a rapid tool for clinical imaging-based diagnosis.

3 June 2024 in Algorithms
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
JCJaher Hassan Chowdhury
Jaher Hassan Chowdhury
QLQian Liu
Qian Liu
SRSheela Ramanna
Sheela Ramanna
Facial emotion recognition (FER) is crucial across psychology, neuroscience, computer vision, and machine learning due to the diversified and subjective nature of emotions, varying considerably across individuals, cultures, and contexts. This study explored FER through convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Histogram Equalization techniques. It investigated the impact of histogram equalization, data augmentation, and various model optimization strategies on FER accuracy across different datasets like KDEF, CK+, and FER2013. Using pre-trained VGG architectures, such as VGG19 and VGG16, this study also examined the effectiveness of fine-tuning hyperparameters and implementing different learning rate schedulers. The evaluation encompassed diverse metrics including accuracy, Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC-ROC), Area Under the Precision–Recall Curve (AUC-PRC), and Weighted F1 score. Notably, the fine-tuned VGG architecture demonstrated a state-of-the-art performance compared to conventional transfer learning models and achieved 100%, 95.92%, and 69.65% on the CK+, KDEF, and FER2013 datasets, respectively.

2 March 2024 in Journal of Translational Medicine
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
ZHZi Huai Huang
Zi Huai Huang
LCLianghong Chen
Lianghong Chen
YSYan Sun
Yan Sun
QLQian Liu
Qian Liu
PHPingzhao Hu
Pingzhao Hu
Background: Breast Cancer (BC) is a highly heterogeneous and complex disease. Personalized treatment options require the integration of multi-omic data and consideration of phenotypic variability. Radiogenomics aims to merge medical images with genomic measurements but encounter challenges due to unpaired data consisting of imaging, genomic, or clinical outcome data. In this study, we propose the utilization of a well-trained conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) to address the unpaired data issue in radiogenomic analysis of BC. The generated images will then be used to predict the mutations status of key driver genes and BC subtypes. Methods: We integrated the paired MRI and multi-omic (mRNA gene expression, DNA methylation, and copy number variation) profiles of 61 BC patients from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). To facilitate this integration, we employed a Bayesian Tensor Factorization approach to factorize the multi-omic data into 17 latent features. Subsequently, a cGAN model was trained based on the matched side-view patient MRIs and their corresponding latent features to predict MRIs for BC patients who lack MRIs. Model performance was evaluated by calculating the distance between real and generated images using the Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) metric. BC subtype and mutation status of driver genes were obtained from the cBioPortal platform, where 3 genes were selected based on the number of mutated patients. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was constructed and trained using the generated MRIs for mutation status prediction. Receiver operating characteristic area under curve (ROC-AUC) and precision-recall area under curve (PR-AUC) were used to evaluate the performance of the CNN models for mutation status prediction. Precision, recall and F1 score were used to evaluate the performance of the CNN model in subtype classification. Results: The FID of the images from the well-trained cGAN model based on the test set is 1.31. The CNN for TP53, PIK3CA, and CDH1 mutation prediction yielded ROC-AUC values 0.9508, 0.7515, and 0.8136 and PR-AUC are 0.9009, 0.7184, and 0.5007, respectively for the three genes. Multi-class subtype prediction achieved precision, recall and F1 scores of 0.8444, 0.8435 and 0.8336 respectively. The source code and related data implemented the algorithms can be found in the project GitHub at https://github.com/mattthuang/BC_RadiogenomicGAN. Conclusion: Our study establishes cGAN as a viable tool for generating synthetic BC MRIs for mutation status prediction and subtype classification to better characterize the heterogeneity of BC in patients. The synthetic images also have the potential to significantly augment existing MRI data and circumvent issues surrounding data sharing and patient privacy for future BC machine learning studies.

20 February 2025 in Frontiers in Big Data
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
HLHuanjing Liu
Huanjing Liu
XZXiao Zhang
Xiao Zhang
QLQian Liu
Qian Liu
\L\R\Nhuanjing Liu
\R\Nhuanjing Liu
Neurodegenerative diseases are chronic, progressive conditions that cause irreversible damage to the nervous system, particularly in aging populations. Early diagnosis is a critical challenge, as these diseases often develop slowly and without clear symptoms until significant damage has occurred. Recent advances in radiomics and genomics have provided valuable insights into the mechanisms of these diseases by identifying specific imaging features and genomic patterns. Radiogenomics enhances diagnostic capabilities by linking genomics with imaging phenotypes, offering a more comprehensive understanding of disease progression. The growing field of artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and deep learning, opens new opportunities for improving the accuracy and timeliness of these diagnoses. This review examines the application of AI-based radiogenomics in neurodegenerative diseases, summarizing key model designs, performance metrics, publicly available data resources, significant findings, and future research directions. It provides a starting point and guidance for those seeking to explore this emerging area of study.

21 August 2025 in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
SDShyamal Y. Dharia
Shyamal Y. Dharia
QLQian Liu
Qian Liu
SSStephen Smith
Stephen Smith
Camilo E. ValderramaCamilo E. Valderrama
Camilo E. Valderrama

7 October 2024 in PLOS Computational Biology
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
LCLianghong Chen
Lianghong Chen
ZHZi Huai Huang
Zi Huai Huang
YSYan Sun
Yan Sun
MDMike Domaratzki
Mike Domaratzki
QLQian Liu
Qian Liu
PHPingzhao Hu
Pingzhao Hu
This study addresses the heterogeneity of Breast Cancer (BC) by employing a Conditional Probabilistic Diffusion Model (CPDM) to synthesize Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) based on multi-omic data, including gene expression, copy number variation, and DNA methylation. The lack of paired medical images and genomics data in previous studies presented a challenge, which the CPDM aims to overcome. The well-trained CPDM successfully generated synthetic MRIs for 726 TCGA-BRCA patients, who lacked actual MRIs, using their multi-omic profiles. Evaluation metrics such as Frechet’s Inception Distance (FID), Mean Square Error (MSE), and Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) demonstrated the CPDM’s effectiveness, with an FID of 2.02, an MSE of 0.02, and an SSIM of 0.59 based on the 15-fold cross-validation. The synthetic MRIs were used to predict clinical attributes, achieving an Area Under the Receiver-Operating-Characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.82 and an Area Under the Precision-Recall Curve (AUPRC) of 0.84 for predicting ER+/HER2+ subtypes. Additionally, the MRIs served to accurately predicted BC patient survival with a Concordance-index (C-index) score of 0.88, outperforming other baseline models. This research demonstrates the potential of CPDMs in generating MRIs based on BC patients’ genomic profiles, offering valuable insights for radiogenomic research and advancements in precision medicine. The study provides a novel approach to understanding BC heterogeneity for early detection and personalized treatment.