Can Machine Learning Be Better than Biased Readers?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Training machine learning (ML) models in medical imaging requires large amounts of labeled data. To minimize labeling workload, it is common to divide training data among multiple readers for separate annotation without consensus and then combine the labeled data for training a ML model. This can lead to a biased training dataset and poor ML algorithm prediction performance. The purpose of this study is to determine if ML algorithms can overcome biases caused by multiple readers’ labeling without consensus. Methods: This study used a publicly available chest X-ray dataset of pediatric pneumonia. As an analogy to a practical dataset without labeling consensus among multiple readers, random and systematic errors were artificially added to the dataset to generate biased data for a binary-class classification task. The Resnet18-based convolutional neural network (CNN) was used as a baseline model. A Resnet18 model with a regularization term added as a loss function was utilized to examine for improvement in the baseline model. Results: The effects of false positive labels, false negative labels, and random errors (5–25%) resulted in a loss of AUC (0–14%) when training a binary CNN classifier. The model with a regularized loss function improved the AUC (75–84%) over that of the baseline model (65–79%). Conclusion: This study indicated that it is possible for ML algorithms to overcome individual readers’ biases when consensus is not available. It is recommended to use regularized loss functions when allocating annotation tasks to multiple readers as they are easy to implement and effective in mitigating biased labels.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".