5 ms·

> improving medical imaging. This can be dangerous. A lot of medical imaging deliberately avoids using any kind of lossy compression due to worries about artif

> improving medical imaging. This can be dangerous. A lot of medical imaging deliberately avoids using any kind of lossy compression due to worries about artifacts in the image. Actually adding new pixels that are not in the raw image seems especially worrying.

gpt5 5y ago
This would depends on the false positive / false negative rate. Depending on these numbers it could be used as a screener test for example, where it is used before a more invasive test is done.
- kongin 5y ago
  > This would depends on the false positive / false negative rate. I'm not a doctor, but I am a physicist and former pro-photographer, what is noise and what is signal in an experiment whose output is an 'image' has nothing to do with what makes a photo look good to human eyes. Often the whole point of methods of visualization is to make the image look objectively bad so you can easily pick out the areas of interest by the fact they are an eyesore. Applying upscaling to those images will actively destroy vital data.
TeeMassive 5y ago
In depends on the way it is used. If it's used knowingly and as a last resort effort just to make sure that nothing is there then I don't see the problem.
- smt88 5y ago
  That means it should only be used to detect false negatives, not false positives. I'm not sure I trust people to maintain that discipline.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Not sure what you mean, but if you're envisionign something like 'doctor looking at original, doesn't think there's anything wrong, but then checks upscaled image as well, just to be sure' then that is very dangerous, as it can lead to a significant increase in unnecessary testing. It may not be exactly as dangerous as the opposite (doctor looks at image thinks there is something suspicious, checks upscaled image to see if it's there as well), but it's still very dangerous.
rubatuga 5y ago
Wait, you mean you don't want a doctor using hallucinated images to treat you? Can't wait for deepdream to be applied to chest x rays. /s
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  No biggie, just get an AI diagnosis classifier to look at your AI upscaled medical images.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    Now you know the ethnicities of your patients, but have no idea whether they have cancer.
  - 0-_-0 5y ago
    Actually, just train the classifier on the raw data. Cut out the middleman.
- forgingahead 5y ago
  Sadly, pharma companies & hospitals will probably prefer these types of images being used: "Oh more likely than not, there is something there - let's start you on this long-term course of expensive medication!".
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
I'd agree with this. This is a great example where I wouldn't put this into a critical production system. Up-sample your Tinder photo? Sure. Look for a sarcoma or bulging disk? No
lathiat 5y ago
Reminds me of some Xerox copiers that actually were changing 6s to 8s with their compression: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_means_dodgy_numbers_and_dangerous_designs/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...
- JimDabell 5y ago
  Not to mention accidentally adding Ryan Gosling’s face to a photo! https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/ https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-a...
  - choeger 5y ago
    That's definitely an enhancement.
  - scoopertrooper 5y ago
    Accident or a vast conspiracy?
  - forgingahead 5y ago
    Or upscaling President Obama to become a Caucasian person: https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801 https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801
systemvoltage 5y ago
It's like trying to search for new galaxies and celestial bodies using homemade telescope + Google AI Photo Upscaling service. Facepalm.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Yeah. I am amazed when I see doctors seeing an xray cat or mri images and look at some haze somewhere and diagnoize the issue. Imagine that thing being removed or enhanced by some algorithm. Also, why the heck would medical images want to be upscaled?
- webmaven 5y ago
  > Also, why the heck would medical images want to be upscaled? One reason might be to reduce eyestrain.
jfoster 5y ago
This is probably an example that the writer came up with. I'm very sure that the people who work on this are well aware that the details it fills in may not match reality.
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
Right. This technology is very dangerous if used to compress & then 'uncompress' medical images. I used to be a bit more cautious but I think if the model was specifically trained on x-rays or some type of medical images, it could do a very good job. I think the original image should always be shown in addition to the AI upscaled image. Having both the original plus a AI upscaled image that is 'correct' 90% of the time could be very useful. When it comes to things like distinguishing a shadow on a scan, I think AI might actually be better 'detecting' whether something is a real shadow or just very similar to a shadow. I think it's just one of those things where AI up-scaling improves stuff ~80% of the time but is worse the other ~20%. The fundamental issue may become the same with self driving cars; people trust the AI too much and become inattentive themselves. While you certainly can't add 'correct' information that doesn't already exist in an image, the upscaling could correctly make existing information more obvious. Assuming that the human brain functions pretty much like AI (or rather the opposite) then at some point AI will become as competent which means that eventually with enough training & tweaking it should be as good or better than having a second human perspective.
- account42 5y ago
  > Right. This technology is very dangerous if used to compress & then 'uncompress' medical images. It could actually be useful for compression as a predictor, but only if you also store the residual so that the true original image can be reconstructed.
pfortuny 5y ago
Either you have the information or you do not. Interpolation (of whatever type) is always adding “guesses”. So: not for me thanks. Pretty scary stuff.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
I worry such funny algorithms find their way into hardware and start causing chaos in science and engineering. People do rely on COTS measuring equipment for a lot of important work, and there's a tacit assumption that the equipment tries to reflect reality. I've mentioned this before[0], so quoting myself: "for example, a research team may decide to not spend money on expensive scientific cameras for monitoring experiment, and instead opt to buy an expensive - but still much cheaper - DSLR sold to photographers, or strap a couple of iPhones 15 they found in the drawer (it's the future, they're all using iPhones 17, which is two generations behind the newest one). That's using COTS equipment. COTS is typically sold to less sophisticated users, but is often useful for less sophisticated needs of more sophisticated users too. But if COTS cameras start to accrue built-in algorithms that literally fake data, it may be a while before such researchers realize they're looking at photos where most of the pixels don't correspond to observable reality, in a complicated way they didn't expect." -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26451691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26451691
- rutthenut 5y ago
  Bit like how people post pictures taken with their phones, using a 'nofilter' hashtag, entirely unaware that the phone software has applied a filter of some sort automagically. They don't post 'raw' images
dagw 5y ago
The original paper[1] itself accidentally demonstrates how dangerous this will be. Look at the picture of the leopard and study the patter of the spots around the face. The pattern on the upscaled image is clearly different from the original. The algorithm has just generated 'realistic' looking spots where it thinks there should be spots, and they have no relation to reality. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.07636.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.07636.pdf

gpt5 5y ago

This would depends on the false positive / false negative rate. Depending on these numbers it could be used as a screener test for example, where it is used before a more invasive test is done.

kongin 5y ago
> This would depends on the false positive / false negative rate. I'm not a doctor, but I am a physicist and former pro-photographer, what is noise and what is signal in an experiment whose output is an 'image' has nothing to do with what makes a photo look good to human eyes. Often the whole point of methods of visualization is to make the image look objectively bad so you can easily pick out the areas of interest by the fact they are an eyesore. Applying upscaling to those images will actively destroy vital data.

TeeMassive 5y ago

In depends on the way it is used. If it's used knowingly and as a last resort effort just to make sure that nothing is there then I don't see the problem.

smt88 5y ago
That means it should only be used to detect false negatives, not false positives. I'm not sure I trust people to maintain that discipline.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Not sure what you mean, but if you're envisionign something like 'doctor looking at original, doesn't think there's anything wrong, but then checks upscaled image as well, just to be sure' then that is very dangerous, as it can lead to a significant increase in unnecessary testing. It may not be exactly as dangerous as the opposite (doctor looks at image thinks there is something suspicious, checks upscaled image to see if it's there as well), but it's still very dangerous.

rubatuga 5y ago

Wait, you mean you don't want a doctor using hallucinated images to treat you? Can't wait for deepdream to be applied to chest x rays. /s

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
No biggie, just get an AI diagnosis classifier to look at your AI upscaled medical images.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Now you know the ethnicities of your patients, but have no idea whether they have cancer.
- 0-_-0 5y ago
  Actually, just train the classifier on the raw data. Cut out the middleman.
forgingahead 5y ago
Sadly, pharma companies & hospitals will probably prefer these types of images being used: "Oh more likely than not, there is something there - let's start you on this long-term course of expensive medication!".

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

I'd agree with this. This is a great example where I wouldn't put this into a critical production system. Up-sample your Tinder photo? Sure. Look for a sarcoma or bulging disk? No

lathiat 5y ago

Reminds me of some Xerox copiers that actually were changing 6s to 8s with their compression: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_means_dodgy_numbers_and_dangerous_designs/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...

JimDabell 5y ago
Not to mention accidentally adding Ryan Gosling’s face to a photo! https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/ https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-a...
- choeger 5y ago
  That's definitely an enhancement.
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  Accident or a vast conspiracy?
- forgingahead 5y ago
  Or upscaling President Obama to become a Caucasian person: https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801 https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801

systemvoltage 5y ago

It's like trying to search for new galaxies and celestial bodies using homemade telescope + Google AI Photo Upscaling service. Facepalm.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Yeah. I am amazed when I see doctors seeing an xray cat or mri images and look at some haze somewhere and diagnoize the issue. Imagine that thing being removed or enhanced by some algorithm. Also, why the heck would medical images want to be upscaled?

webmaven 5y ago
> Also, why the heck would medical images want to be upscaled? One reason might be to reduce eyestrain.

jfoster 5y ago

This is probably an example that the writer came up with. I'm very sure that the people who work on this are well aware that the details it fills in may not match reality.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

Right. This technology is very dangerous if used to compress & then 'uncompress' medical images. I used to be a bit more cautious but I think if the model was specifically trained on x-rays or some type of medical images, it could do a very good job. I think the original image should always be shown in addition to the AI upscaled image. Having both the original plus a AI upscaled image that is 'correct' 90% of the time could be very useful. When it comes to things like distinguishing a shadow on a scan, I think AI might actually be better 'detecting' whether something is a real shadow or just very similar to a shadow. I think it's just one of those things where AI up-scaling improves stuff ~80% of the time but is worse the other ~20%. The fundamental issue may become the same with self driving cars; people trust the AI too much and become inattentive themselves. While you certainly can't add 'correct' information that doesn't already exist in an image, the upscaling could correctly make existing information more obvious. Assuming that the human brain functions pretty much like AI (or rather the opposite) then at some point AI will become as competent which means that eventually with enough training & tweaking it should be as good or better than having a second human perspective.

account42 5y ago
> Right. This technology is very dangerous if used to compress & then 'uncompress' medical images. It could actually be useful for compression as a predictor, but only if you also store the residual so that the true original image can be reconstructed.

pfortuny 5y ago

Either you have the information or you do not. Interpolation (of whatever type) is always adding “guesses”. So: not for me thanks. Pretty scary stuff.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

I worry such funny algorithms find their way into hardware and start causing chaos in science and engineering. People do rely on COTS measuring equipment for a lot of important work, and there's a tacit assumption that the equipment tries to reflect reality. I've mentioned this before[0], so quoting myself: "for example, a research team may decide to not spend money on expensive scientific cameras for monitoring experiment, and instead opt to buy an expensive - but still much cheaper - DSLR sold to photographers, or strap a couple of iPhones 15 they found in the drawer (it's the future, they're all using iPhones 17, which is two generations behind the newest one). That's using COTS equipment. COTS is typically sold to less sophisticated users, but is often useful for less sophisticated needs of more sophisticated users too. But if COTS cameras start to accrue built-in algorithms that literally fake data, it may be a while before such researchers realize they're looking at photos where most of the pixels don't correspond to observable reality, in a complicated way they didn't expect." -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26451691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26451691

rutthenut 5y ago
Bit like how people post pictures taken with their phones, using a 'nofilter' hashtag, entirely unaware that the phone software has applied a filter of some sort automagically. They don't post 'raw' images

dagw 5y ago

The original paper[1] itself accidentally demonstrates how dangerous this will be. Look at the picture of the leopard and study the patter of the spots around the face. The pattern on the upscaled image is clearly different from the original. The algorithm has just generated 'realistic' looking spots where it thinks there should be spots, and they have no relation to reality. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.07636.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.07636.pdf