Medical Image Analysis and Machine Learning

A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Medical Imaging and Theranostics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 21 April 2026 | Viewed by 662

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Informatics, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania
Interests: AI explainability; intelligent systems; data intelligence; deep learning; medical imaging

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Guest Editor
Department of Research Methodology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, 200533 Craova, Romania
Interests: artificial neural network; medical image analysis; biomedical image processing; medical image processing; biomedical image technologies; pulmonology; lung disease; gastroenterology; liver; pancreas; histology; computerized morphometry; microscopic image analysis; computer-assisted image analysis; cell image analysis
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Medical image analysis, when combined with machine learning, has transformed the landscape of diagnostic medicine by enabling more accurate, efficient, and early disease detection. Despite the growing prevalence of machine learning applications in medicine, there remains a significant gap in translating algorithmic advances into clinically viable tools that can assist healthcare professionals across various specialties. This Special Issue of Diagnostics aims to attract cutting-edge contributions that demonstrate novel methodologies, robust validation frameworks, and real-world applications of machine learning and deep learning in medical image interpretation.

Medical images—ranging from radiological scans (MRI, CT, PET) to microscopic histopathological slides and digital retinal images—contain complex patterns and hidden features that require advanced analytical tools to decode. Machine learning has shown considerable promise in automating feature extraction, enhancing diagnostic accuracy, enabling early disease detection, and predicting treatment response. However, the success of such tools is dependent on high-quality data, interpretable models, cross-domain collaborations, and rigorous benchmarking against clinical standards.

This Special Issue will explore all aspects of image-based diagnostics, including classical computer vision techniques, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), transformers, radiomics, and multimodal fusion strategies. We also welcome research focusing on longitudinal analysis, transfer learning for low-resource settings, privacy-preserving models, explainable AI (XAI), and the integration of imaging biomarkers with genomics or electronic health records. A particular emphasis will be placed on frameworks that enable reproducibility, generalizability, and ethical use of AI in healthcare.

We invite original research articles, comprehensive reviews, and relevant clinical case studies that provide deep insights into state-of-the-art machine learning techniques tailored for medical image analysis. Submissions with translational potential and interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians, computer scientists, and bioengineers are especially encouraged.

Dr. Inzamam Nasir
Prof. Dr. Costin Teodor Streba
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diagnostics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • AI-enhanced clinical imaging workflows
  • deep learning for disease classification and segmentation
  • radiomics and multi-omics integration
  • federated learning and privacy-preserving analytics
  • next-generation medical image annotation techniques
  • explainable AI in diagnostic imaging
  • high-throughput screening in digital pathology
  • cross-domain adaptation and transfer learning in healthcare
  • prognostic and predictive imaging biomarkers
  • clinical decision support systems using machine learning

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

26 pages, 1451 KB  
Article
Hierarchical Multi-Stage Attention and Dynamic Expert Routing for Explainable Gastrointestinal Disease Diagnosis
by Muhammad John Abbas, Hend Alshaya, Wided Bouchelligua, Nehal Hassan and Inzamam Mashood Nasir
Diagnostics 2025, 15(21), 2714; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics15212714 - 27 Oct 2025
Viewed by 267
Abstract
Purpose: Gastrointestinal (GI) illness demands precise and efficient diagnostics, yet conventional approaches (e.g., endoscopy and histopathology) are time-consuming and prone to reader variability. This work presents GID-Xpert, a deep learning framework designed to improve feature learning, accuracy, and interpretability for GI disease classification. [...] Read more.
Purpose: Gastrointestinal (GI) illness demands precise and efficient diagnostics, yet conventional approaches (e.g., endoscopy and histopathology) are time-consuming and prone to reader variability. This work presents GID-Xpert, a deep learning framework designed to improve feature learning, accuracy, and interpretability for GI disease classification. Methods: GID-Xpert integrates a hierarchical, multi-stage attention-driven mixture of experts with dynamic routing. The architecture couples spatial–channel attention mechanisms with specialized expert blocks; a routing module adaptively selects expert paths to enhance representation quality and reduce redundancy. The model is trained and evaluated on three benchmark datasets—WCEBleedGen, GastroEndoNet, and the King Abdulaziz University Hospital Capsule (KAUHC) dataset. Comparative experiments against state-of-the-art baselines and ablation studies (removing attention, expert blocks, and routing) are conducted to quantify the contribution of each component. Results: GID-Xpert achieves superior performance with 100% accuracy on WCEBleedGen, 99.98% on KAUHC, and 75.32% on GastroEndoNet. Comparative evaluations show consistent improvements over contemporary models, while ablations confirm the additive benefits of spatial–channel attention, expert specialization, and dynamic routing. The design also yields reduced computational cost and improved explanation quality via attention-driven reasoning. Conclusion: By unifying attention, expert specialization, and dynamic routing, GID-Xpert delivers accurate, computationally efficient, and more interpretable GI disease classification. These findings support GID-Xpert as a credible diagnostic aid and a strong foundation for future extensions toward broader GI pathologies and clinical integration. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Medical Image Analysis and Machine Learning)
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