Resolving and steering decision foci in machine learning-based vascular imaging

Abstract

A system (SY) for determining a relative importance of each of a plurality of image features (F) of a vascular medical image impacting an overall diagnostic metric computed for the image from an automatically-generated diagnostic rule. A medical kin image database (MIDB) includes a plurality of vascular medical images (M). A rule generating unit (RGU) analyzes the plurality of C vascular medical images and automatically generates at least one diagnostic rule corresponding to a common diagnosis of a subset of the plurality of vascular medical images based on a plurality of image features common to the subset of vascular medical images. An image providing unit (IPU) provides a current vascular medical image (CVMI) including the plurality of image features. A diagnostic metric computation unit (DMCU) computes an overall diagnostic metric for the current vascular medical image by applying the at least one automatically-generated diagnostic rule to the current vascular medical image. A decision propagation unit (DPU) identifies, in the current vascular medical image, the relative importance of each of the plurality of image features on the computed overall diagnostic metric.