Vertebra X-ray Images Labeling

  • Client Profile

    Industry: Computer Software
    Location: Vienna, Austria
    Size: 50+ employees

  • Company Bio

    Our client is an international Health-AI Startup aiming to challenge the status quo of radiographic image analysis. The company is building software solutions for the early detection and diagnosis of bone & joint diseases.

Overview

Our client addresses insufficient grading and the lack of standardization in the assessment and early prediction of osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis. The company’s algorithms enable them to efficiently and effectively investigate the condition and quality of a bone using a conventional X-ray format.

  • Target Time per each X-ray

    <10 min

  • Volume of X-rays

    500

  • Target Accuracy

    >98%

Challenge

The main task for this project was to place on each image and every vertebra the following:

  • 6 landmarks, so that each corresponds to the four corners of the vertebral body and the midpoints of the endplates

  • Identity: labels should be assigned in the following order: L5 → L4 → L3 → L2 → L1 → T12 → T11 → T10 → T9 → T8 → T7 → …

Due to the projective distortion found on X-rays and/or because of bad imaging, placing landmarks is a challenging task even for a medical specialist.

Human Resources

For this project, we put together a team consisting of two data annotators without a medical background (per the client’s request), one quality control specialist — a radiologist with 3+ years of medical practice, and one project manager.

Tool

The client did not provide us with any tools in order to perform the annotations, but did, however, specify the output (JSON) requirements. The Mindy Support Software Development Team developed a special tool that met the client’s requirements and was completely in line with the client’s workflow.

The system allowed us to use our multistep quality control approach.

Solution Process

As the client required a team of annotators without medical background and at the same time a quality supervisor with medical background, Mindy Support had to go through several stages of preparation, prior to starting the project

  • Onboarding phase — client’s presentation of how they are annotating the vertebrae. During this phase, our team was deeply involved in the project and all issues were clarified;

  • Training phase — once everything was made clear for the team, the medical supervisor developed a detailed training program along with instructions for non-medical annotators;

  • Tool setting phase — we set our tool in a way so that the difficult cases were sent directly to the medical supervisor for annotation;

  • Cross-checking with the client’s requirements — constant improvement of our process and progress through clear communication and feedback from the client.

  • Production — after all of the stages of preparation all of the images were carefully annotated.

Mindy Support is ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified. Our information security management system (ISMS) is built on the basis of international standards that helps organizations keep information assets secure.

We are committed to respecting all rights of the data subjects under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679. According to the Article 28 of the GDPR, the relationship between the controller and the processor are regulated by Data Processing Agreement, which we put in place with every Client.

Results

  • Mindy Support has developed a dedicated X-ray images’ annotation tool;

  • 5,000+ annotated images;

  • All KPIs were met.

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