Work

An improved YOLOv10-based framework for knee MRI lesion detection with enhanced small object recognition and low contrast feature extraction

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Rationale and objectives: To address the challenges in detecting anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) lesions in knee MRI examinations, including difficulties in identifying tiny lesions, insufficient extraction of low-contrast features, and poor modeling of irregular lesion morphologies, and to provide a precise and efficient auxiliary diagnostic tool for clinical practice. Materials and methods: An enhanced framework based on YOLOv10 is constructed. The backbone network is optimized using the C2f-SimAM module to enhance multi-scale feature extraction and spatial attention; an Adaptive Spatial Fusion (ASF) module is introduced in the neck to better fuse multi-scale spatial features; and a novel hybrid loss function combining Focal-EIoU and KPT Loss is employed. To ensure rigorous statistical evaluation, we utilized a five-fold cross-validation strategy on a dataset of 917 cases. Results: < 0.05) compared to the standard YOLOv10, and [email protected]:0.95 is improved by 2.5%. Qualitative analysis further confirms the model's ability to reduce false negatives in small, low-contrast tears. Conclusion: This framework effectively connects general object detection models with the specific requirements of medical imaging, providing a precise and efficient solution for diagnosing ACL injuries in routine clinical workflows.

Source: Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence

DOI: 10.3389/frai.2025.1675834