Machine Learning in Medical Imaging

This article will discuss very different ways of using machine learning that may be less familiar, and we will demonstrate through examples the role of these concepts in medical imaging. Although the term machine learning is relatively recent, the ideas of machine learning have been applied to medical imaging for decades, perhaps most notably in the areas of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) and functional brain mapping. We will not attempt in this brief article to survey the rich literature of this field. Instead our goals will be 1) to acquaint the reader with some modern techniques that are now staples of the machine-learning field and 2) to illustrate how these techniques can be employed in various ways in medical imaging.