Emerging Frameworks for Objective Task-based Evaluation of Quantitative Medical Imaging Methods
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Jul 7, 2025
Abstract
Quantitative imaging (QI) is demonstrating strong promise across multiple
clinical applications. For clinical translation of QI methods, objective
evaluation on clinically relevant tasks is essential. To address this need,
multiple evaluation strategies are being developed. In this paper, based on
previous literature, we outline four emerging frameworks to perform evaluation
studies of QI methods. We first discuss the use of virtual imaging trials
(VITs) to evaluate QI methods. Next, we outline a no-gold-standard evaluation
framework to clinically evaluate QI methods without ground truth. Third, a
framework to evaluate QI methods for joint detection and quantification tasks
is outlined. Finally, we outline a framework to evaluate QI methods that output
multi-dimensional parameters, such as radiomic features. We review these
frameworks, discussing their utilities and limitations. Further, we examine
future research areas in evaluation of QI methods. Given the recent
advancements in PET, including long axial field-of-view scanners and the
development of artificial-intelligence algorithms, we present these frameworks
in the context of PET.
