RVM-GSM: Classification of OCT Images of Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause Based on Integrated Model of Local–Global Information Pattern

Abstract

Genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM) is a group of syndromes, including atrophy of the reproductive tract and urinary tract, and sexual dysfunction, caused by decreased levels of hormones, such as estrogen, in women during the transition to, or late stage of, menopause. GSM symptoms can gradually become severe with age and menopausal time, seriously affecting the safety, and physical and mental health, of patients. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems can obtain images similar to “optical slices” in a non-destructive manner. This paper presents a neural network, called RVM-GSM, to implement automatic classification tasks for different types of GSM-OCT images. The RVM-GSM module uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a vision transformer (ViT) to capture local and global features of the GSM-OCT images, respectively, and, then, fuses the two features in a multi-layer perception module to classify the image. In accordance with the practical needs of clinical work, lightweight post-processing is added to the final surface of the RVM-GSM module to compress the module. Experimental results showed that the accuracy rate of RVM-GSM in the GSM-OCT image classification task was 98.2%. This result is better than those of the CNN and Vit models, demonstrating the promise and potential of the application of RVM-GSM in the physical health and hygiene fields for women.

Keywords

• deep learning
• genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM)
• image classification
• optical coherence tomography (OCT)
• convolutional neural network (CNN)
• vision transformer (ViT)