Edge-optimized Multimodal Generative AI Framework: Enabling Automated Radiology Report Generation from Medical Images

This project builds an edge device-optimized multimodal generative AI system that fuses visual encoders and language models to automatically generate structured radiology reports from medical images, and integrates explainable AI technologies to enhance clinical credibility. It aims to address pain points such as heavy workload of radiologists, insufficient diagnostic consistency, uneven distribution of medical resources, and data privacy and security issues.

Medical image diagnosis is a key link in healthcare, but the traditional model faces challenges:

1. Heavy workload: Shortage of radiologists, who need to process a large number of images and reports daily;
2. Diagnostic consistency: Differences in doctors' experience and styles lead to uneven report quality;
3. Uneven resource distribution: High-quality resources are concentrated in big cities, making it difficult for grassroots and remote areas to get timely diagnosis;
4. Data privacy and security: Cloud processing has leakage risks, so there is an urgent need for offline local deployment. The project develops an AI framework to address these pain points and assist in report writing.

Multimodal Fusion Architecture

• Visual Encoding Branch: Multi-scale feature extraction (pyramid network captures lesions of different scales), domain-specific pre-training (pre-trained on medical image datasets to improve sensitivity), spatial attention module (focuses on key areas);
• Language Generation Branch: Medical knowledge injection (fuses literature and report data to master professional terms), structured output (follows standard report templates), multilingual support (cross-language alignment to serve different users).

Edge Optimization Strategies

• Model Quantization: Weight quantization (32-bit → 8/4-bit integers), activation quantization (dynamic quantization reduces computation);
• Knowledge Distillation: Teacher-student network transfers knowledge from large models to lightweight edge models;
• Operator Optimization: Optimizes operators for edge hardware characteristics (ARM NEON, NPU).

To enhance clinical credibility, multiple explainable technologies are integrated:

1. Attention Visualization: Generates spatial attention maps (highlighting key lesion areas) and cross-modal attention maps (showing the correspondence between visual features and text);
2. Attribution Analysis: Uses Grad-CAM to quantify the impact of image regions on diagnosis;
3. Report Evidence Chain: Each description is accompanied by image evidence references, forming a complete review chain.

Offline Operation Capability

• Local computing, data does not leave the device, protecting privacy; low-latency response, meeting emergency needs; adapting to weak network environments.

Multimodal Image Support

Able to process multiple image types such as X-rays, CT, MRI, and ultrasound.

Report Quality Control

• Confidence assessment (marks low-confidence content);
• Consistency check (detects internal logical contradictions);
• Medical common sense verification (uses knowledge graphs to filter unreasonable outputs).

1. Improve Diagnostic Efficiency: Shorten report writing time by more than 50% and free up doctors' energy;
2. Promote Medical Equity: Edge deployment enables AI capabilities to reach grassroots levels, alleviating resource inequality;
3. Support Medical Education: Explainable functions help medical students learn image diagnosis thinking;
4. Promote Precision Medicine: Report standardization helps build high-quality databases, laying the foundation for precision medicine.

Current challenges:

1. Rare disease recognition: Insufficient model capability due to scarce training data;
2. Depth of multimodal fusion: Need for finer-grained pixel-level to vocabulary-level alignment;
3. Personalized adaptation: Rapidly adapt to the diagnostic styles of different hospitals/doctors. Future: With the advancement of multimodal large models and edge hardware, such systems will play a greater role in clinical practice.