AI-driven framework for automated detection of kidney stones in CT images: integration of deep learning architectures and transformers

<i><b>Purpose</b></i>. Kidney stones, a prevalent urological condition, associated with acute pain requires prompt and precise diagnosis for optimal therapeutic intervention. While computed tomography (CT) imaging remains the definitive diagnostic modality, manual interpretation of these images is a labor-intensive and error-prone process. This research endeavors to introduce Artificial Intelligence based methodology for automated detection and classification of renal calculi within the CT images.<i><b>Method</b></i>: To identify the CT images with kidney stones, a comprehensive exploration of various ML and DL architectures, along with rigorous experimentation with diverse hyperparameters, was undertaken to refine the model's performance. The proposed workflow involves two key stages: (1) precise segmentation of pathological regions of interest (ROIs) using DL algorithms, and (2) binary classification of the segmented ROIs using both ML and DL models.<i><b>Results</b></i>: The SwinTResNet model, optimized using the RMSProp algorithm with a learning rate of 0.0001, demonstrated optimal performance, achieving a training accuracy of 97.27% and a validation accuracy of 96.16% in the segmentation task. The Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture, when coupled with the ADAM optimizer and a learning rate of 0.0001, exhibited robust convergence and consistently achieved the highest performance metrics. Specifically, the model attained a peak training accuracy of 96.63% and a validation accuracy of 95.67%.<i><b>Conclusion</b></i>: The results demonstrate the potential of this integrated framework to enhance diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, thereby supporting improved clinical decision-making in the management of kidney stones.