Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41381469›Full record

ArticleNature communications2025

Large-scale generative tumor synthesis in computed tomography images for improving tumor recognition.

Linshan Wu, Jiaxin Zhuang, Yanning Zhou, Sunan He, Jiabo Ma, Luyang Luo, Xi Wang, Xuefeng Ni, Xiaoling Zhong, Mingxiang Wu and 5 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
  2. Article
  3. Text-Driven Tumor Synthesis.IEEE transactions on medical imaging · 2026
    Article
  4. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

15 authors.

Linshan WuDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0486-184X
Jiaxin ZhuangDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
Yanning ZhouTencent AI Lab, Shenzhen, China.
Sunan HeDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
Jiabo MaDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8532-4466
Luyang LuoDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7485-4151
Xi WangDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5218-2761
Xuefeng NiDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
Xiaoling ZhongDepartment of Radiology, Shenzhen People's Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
Mingxiang WuDepartment of Radiology, Shenzhen People's Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
Yinghua ZhaoDepartment of Radiology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Xiaohui DuanDepartment of Radiology, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2224-0887
Varut VardhanabhutiDepartment of Diagnostic Radiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6677-3194
Pranav RajpurkarDepartment of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard University, Boston, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8030-3727
Hao ChenDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China. jhc@cse.ust.hk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8400-3780

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

AI-driven tumor recognition unlocks new possibilities for precise tumor screening and diagnosis. However, the progress is heavily hampered by the scarcity of annotated datasets, demanding extensive efforts by radiologists. To this end, we introduce FreeTumor, a Generative AI framework to enable large-scale tumor synthesis for mitigating data scarcity. Specifically, FreeTumor effectively leverages limited labeled data and large-scale unlabeled data for training. Unleashing the power of large-scale data, FreeTumor is capable of synthesizing a large number of realistic tumors for augmenting training datasets. We curate a large-scale dataset comprising 161,310 Computed Tomography (CT) volumes for tumor synthesis and recognition, with only 2.3% containing annotated tumors. 13 board-certified radiologists are engaged to discern between synthetic and real tumors, rigorously validating the quality of synthetic tumors. Through high-quality tumor synthesis, FreeTumor showcases a notable superiority over state-of-the-art tumor recognition methods, indicating promising prospects in clinical applications.

Indexed as

Image Processing, Computer-AssistedNeoplasmsTomography, X-Ray ComputedAlgorithmsArtificial IntelligenceHumans

Identifiers

PMID41381469
PMCPMC12698779

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.