Automatic detection of image sharpening in maxillofacial radiology

Background: Improvement of image quality in radiology, including the maxillofacial region, is important for diagnosis by enhancing the visual perception of the original image. One of the most used modification methods is sharpening, in which simultaneously with the improvement, due to edge enhancement, several artifacts appear. These might lead to misdiagnosis and, as a consequence, to improper treatment. The purpose of this study was to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of automatic sharpening detection based on neural networks. Methods: The in-house created dataset contained 4290 X-ray slices from different datasets of cone beam computed tomography images were taken on 2 different devices: Ortophos 3D SL (Sirona Dental Systems GmbH, Bensheim, Germany) and Planmeca ProMax 3D (Planmeca, Helsinki, Finland). The selected slices were modified using the sharpening filter available in the software RadiAnt Dicom Viewer software (Medixant, Poland), version 5.5. The neural network known as "ResNet-50" was used, which has been previously trained on the ImageNet dataset. The input images and their corresponding sharpening maps were used to train the network. For the implementation, Keras with Tensorflow backend was used. The model was trained using NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed to calculate the detection accuracy using MedCalc Statistical Software version 14.8.1 (MedCalc Software Ltd, Ostend, Belgium). The study was approved by the Ethical Committee. Results: For the test, 1200 different images with the filter and without modification were used. An analysis of the detection of three different levels of sharpening (1, 2, 3) showed sensitivity of 53%, 93.33%, 93% and specificity of 72.33%, 84%, 85.33%, respectively with an accuracy of 62.17%, 88.67% and 89% (p < 0.0001). The ROC analysis in all tests showed an Area Under Curve (AUC) different from 0.5 (null hypothesis). Conclusions: This study showed a high performance in automatic sharpening detection of radiological images based on neural network technology. Further investigation of these capabilities, including their application to different types of radiological images, will significantly improve the level of diagnosis and appropriate treatment.