TFFM: Topology-Aware Feature Fusion Module via Latent Graph Reasoning for Retinal Vessel Segmentation

Precise segmentation of retinal arteries and veins carries the diagnosis of systemic cardiovascular conditions. However, standard convolutional architectures often yield topologically disjointed segmentations, characterized by gaps and discontinuities that render reliable graph-based clinical analysis impossible despite high pixel-level accuracy. To address this, we introduce a topology-aware framework engineered to maintain vascular connectivity. Our architecture fuses a Topological Feature Fusion Module (TFFM) that maps local feature representations into a latent graph space, deploying Graph Attention Networks to capture global structural dependencies often missed by fixed receptive fields. Furthermore, we drive the learning process with a hybrid objective function, coupling Tversky loss for class imbalance with soft clDice loss to explicitly penalize topological disconnects. Evaluation on the Fundus-AVSeg dataset reveals state-of-the-art performance, achieving a combined Dice score of 90.97% and a 95% Hausdorff Distance of 3.50 pixels. Notably, our method decreases vessel fragmentation by approximately 38% relative to baselines, yielding topologically coherent vascular trees viable for automated biomarker quantification. We open-source our code at https://tffm-module.github.io/.

A Novel Ensemble-Based Deep Learning Model with Explainable AI for Accurate Kidney Disease Diagnosis

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) represents a significant global health challenge, characterized by the progressive decline in renal function, leading to the accumulation of waste products and disruptions in fluid balance within the body. Given its pervasive impact on public health, there is a pressing need for effective diagnostic tools to enable timely intervention. Our study delves into the application of cutting-edge transfer learning models for the early detection of CKD. Leveraging a comprehensive and publicly available dataset, we meticulously evaluate the performance of several state-of-the-art models, including EfficientNetV2, InceptionNetV2, MobileNetV2, and the Vision Transformer (ViT) technique. Remarkably, our analysis demonstrates superior accuracy rates, surpassing the 90% threshold with MobileNetV2 and achieving 91.5% accuracy with ViT. Moreover, to enhance predictive capabilities further, we integrate these individual methodologies through ensemble modeling, resulting in our ensemble model exhibiting a remarkable 96% accuracy in the early detection of CKD. This significant advancement holds immense promise for improving clinical outcomes and underscores the critical role of machine learning in addressing complex medical challenges.