Colorectal polyp classification using confidence-calibrated convolutional neural networks

Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CADx) systems for in-vivo characterization of Colorectal Polyps (CRPs) which are precursor lesions of Colorectal Cancer (CRC), can assist clinicians with diagnosis and better informed decisionmaking during colonoscopy procedures. Current deep learning-based state-of-the-art solutions achieve a high classification performance, but lack measures to increase the reliability of such systems. In this paper, the reliability of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for characterization of CRPs is specifically addressed by confidence calibration. Well-calibrated models produce classification-confidence scores that reflect the actual correctness likelihood of the model, thereby supporting reliable predictions by trustworthy and informative confidence scores. Two recently proposed trainable calibration methods are explored for CRP classification to calibrate the confidence of the proposed CNN. We show that the confidence-calibration error can be decreased by 33.86% (−0.01648 ± 0.01085), 48.33% (−0.04415 ± 0.01731), 50.57% (−0.11423 ± 0.00680), 61.68% (−0.01553 ± 0.00204) and 48.27% (−0.22074 ± 0.08652) for the Expected Calibration Error (ECE), Average Calibration Error (ACE), Maximum Calibration Error (MCE), Over-Confidence Error (OE) and Cumulative Calibration Error (CUMU), respectively. Moreover, the absolute difference between the average entropy and the expected entropy was considerably reduced by 32.00% (−0.04374 ± 0.01238) on average. Furthermore, even a slightly improved classification performance is observed, compared to the uncalibrated equivalent. The obtained results show that the proposed model for CRP classification with confidence calibration produces better calibrated predictions without sacrificing classification performance. This work shows promising points of engagement towards obtaining reliable and well-calibrated CADx systems for in-vivo polyp characterization, to assist clinicians during colonoscopy procedures.