High-quality semi-supervised anomaly detection with generative adversarial networks.

purposeThe visualization of an anomaly area is easier in anomaly detection methods that use generative models rather than classification models. However, achieving both anomaly detection accuracy and a clear visualization of anomalous areas is challenging. This study aimed to establish a method that combines both detection accuracy and clear visualization of anomalous areas using a generative adversarial network (GAN).

methodsIn this study, StyleGAN2 with adaptive discriminator augmentation (StyleGAN2-ADA), which can generate high-resolution and high-quality images with limited number of datasets, was used as the image generation model, and pixel-to-style-to-pixel (pSp) encoder was used to convert images into intermediate latent variables. We combined existing methods for training and proposed a method for calculating anomaly scores using intermediate latent variables. The proposed method, which combines these two methods, is called high-quality anomaly GAN (HQ-AnoGAN).

resultsThe experimental results obtained using three datasets demonstrated that HQ-AnoGAN has equal or better detection accuracy than the existing methods. The results of the visualization of abnormal areas using the generated images showed that HQ-AnoGAN could generate more natural images than the existing methods and was qualitatively more accurate in the visualization of abnormal areas.

conclusionIn this study, HQ-AnoGAN comprising StyleGAN2-ADA and pSp encoder was proposed with an optimal anomaly score calculation method. The experimental results show that HQ-AnoGAN can achieve both high abnormality detection accuracy and clear visualization of abnormal areas; thus, HQ-AnoGAN demonstrates significant potential for application in medical imaging diagnosis cases where an explanation of diagnosis is required.