Deep Learning for Cleft Lip and Palate Classification: ResNet-based Medical Imaging AI Diagnosis Practice

This project develops a cleft lip and palate medical image classification system based on the ResNet architecture, covering the complete workflow from data preprocessing to model training and evaluation. It explores the feasibility of AI-assisted diagnosis, aiming to address the challenges of traditional manual diagnosis in resource-poor medical areas and has significant clinical implications.

Cleft lip and palate are common congenital facial malformations worldwide, affecting the quality of life of millions of newborns. Early accurate diagnosis is crucial for treatment planning and prognosis improvement. Traditional manual diagnosis relies on doctors' experience and faces challenges in resource-poor medical areas. Deep learning technology (especially CNNs) has revolutionized medical imaging diagnosis. This project uses the ResNet architecture to develop a classification system and explore the possibility of AI-assisted diagnosis.

Why Choose ResNet: ResNet introduces a residual learning mechanism (skip connections) to solve the gradient vanishing problem in deep networks, enabling training of deep networks without performance degradation. Its advantages include: deep feature extraction (capturing subtle pathological features in medical images), transfer learning friendliness (fast convergence on small-scale medical datasets), and stable training.

Model Design: Supports binary classification (normal vs. cleft lip and palate) and multi-class classification (cleft lip, cleft palate, combined cleft lip and palate, etc.) to adapt to different clinical scenarios.

Data Preprocessing: Image standardization (unified size and resolution), data augmentation (rotation/flip/scaling to expand the training set), normalization (accelerate convergence), noise processing (denoising to aid feature extraction).

Training Strategy: Loss function (cross-entropy, weighted loss for class imbalance), optimizer (Adam + learning rate decay), batch size (balance between memory usage and gradient stability), early stopping mechanism (prevent overfitting).

Evaluation Metrics: Accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, confusion matrix, ROC curve and AUC.

Core Files: classification.ipynb (Jupyter Notebook with complete implementation), resnet_cleft_model.pth (PyTorch model weights, ~43MB), requirements.txt (dependency list).

Environment Configuration: Use a virtual environment to manage dependencies. Steps include creating a venv, activating it, installing dependencies, and launching the Notebook.

Version Control Recommendations: Clear Notebook outputs before submission; model files are recommended to be managed with Git LFS or hosted separately.

Data Privacy and Ethics: Strictly comply with data protection regulations, ensuring data desensitization, access control, and audit trails.

Class Imbalance: Medical datasets often have far more normal samples than pathological ones, requiring special sampling strategies, loss functions, or augmentation techniques.

Interpretability: Doctors need to understand the basis of diagnosis; visualization techniques like Grad-CAM can show the model's focus areas.

Generalization Ability: Domain shift exists in data from different hospitals/devices; multi-center validation is a necessary step for deployment.

Assisted Diagnosis System: As a tool for primary medical institutions, it helps improve diagnostic capabilities in resource-poor areas and reduce the burden on experts.

Telemedicine Integration: Combine with telemedicine platforms to provide timely diagnostic advice to remote patients and promote resource balance.

Expansion to Other Malformations: The technical framework can be applied to the detection of congenital heart disease, neural tube defects, etc.

Multi-modal Fusion: Integrate clinical text (medical records, family history) with imaging data to build a more comprehensive diagnostic system.

This project demonstrates the great potential of AI in the field of medical imaging diagnosis, fully showing the deep learning project development workflow, and providing new ideas for solving the problem of uneven medical resources. With the maturity of technology and the improvement of regulatory frameworks, AI-assisted diagnosis systems will play a more important role globally, allowing more patients to benefit from advances in precision medicine.