arXiv subjects

Lorna Smith

Publications and source records attributed to Lorna Smith.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Turning interest into institutional change: teaching advocacy for sustainable research

Systemic change across the digital research landscape is required to reduce the environmental impact of digital research, but while many researchers and technical professionals are motivated to act, they often lack the skills required to translate motivation into lasting organisational change. We present an open-access course that teaches the foundations of advocacy and organisational change to researchers, research software engineers, and research technical professionals. Structured around the UNICEF five-step advocacy cycle, the course covers stakeholder analysis, power mapping, coalition building, storytelling, framing and messaging, and evaluation. It is grounded in the UK policy landscape, including the Concordat for Environmental Sustainability and the UKRI Environmental Sustainability Strategy, and uses a fictional case study to make concepts concrete. The course is designed as a dual-layer resource in which workshop slides and extended self-study notes are contained in a single source material. A short pilot was delivered at the NetDRIVE Net Zero DRI Summer School in June 2026. The course is freely available under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Dual Deep Learning Approach for Non-invasive Renal Tumour Subtyping with VERDICT-MRI

This work aims to characterise renal tumour microstructure using diffusion MRI (dMRI); via the Vascular, Extracellular and Restricted Diffusion for Cytometry in Tumours (VERDICT)-MRI framework with self-supervised learning. Comprehensive datasets were acquired from 14 patients with 15 biopsy-confirmed renal tumours, with nine b-values in the range b=[0,2500]s/mm2. A three-compartment VERDICT model for renal tumours was fitted to the dMRI data using a self-supervised deep neural network, and ROIs were drawn by an experienced uroradiologist. An economical acquisition protocol for future studies with larger patient cohorts was optimised using a recursive feature selection approach. The VERDICT model described the diffusion data in renal tumours more accurately than IVIM or ADC. Combined with self-supervised deep learning, VERDICT identified significant differences in the intracellular volume fraction between cancerous and normal tissue, and in the vascular volume fraction between vascular and non-vascular. The feature selector yields a 4 b-value acquisition of b = [70,150,1000,2000], with a duration of 14 minutes.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2022

Where is VALDO? VAscular Lesions Detection and segmentatiOn challenge at MICCAI 2021

Imaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease provide valuable information on brain health, but their manual assessment is time-consuming and hampered by substantial intra- and interrater variability. Automated rating may benefit biomedical research, as well as clinical assessment, but diagnostic reliability of existing algorithms is unknown. Here, we present the results of the \textit{VAscular Lesions DetectiOn and Segmentation} (\textit{Where is VALDO?}) challenge that was run as a satellite event at the international conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Aided Intervention (MICCAI) 2021. This challenge aimed to promote the development of methods for automated detection and segmentation of small and sparse imaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease, namely enlarged perivascular spaces (EPVS) (Task 1), cerebral microbleeds (Task 2) and lacunes of presumed vascular origin (Task 3) while leveraging weak and noisy labels. Overall, 12 teams participated in the challenge proposing solutions for one or more tasks (4 for Task 1 - EPVS, 9 for Task 2 - Microbleeds and 6 for Task 3 - Lacunes). Multi-cohort data was used in both training and evaluation. Results showed a large variability in performance both across teams and across tasks, with promising results notably for Task 1 - EPVS and Task 2 - Microbleeds and not practically useful results yet for Task 3 - Lacunes. It also highlighted the performance inconsistency across cases that may deter use at an individual level, while still proving useful at a population level.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

Let's agree to disagree: learning highly debatable multirater labelling

Classification and differentiation of small pathological objects may greatly vary among human raters due to differences in training, expertise and their consistency over time. In a radiological setting, objects commonly have high within-class appearance variability whilst sharing certain characteristics across different classes, making their distinction even more difficult. As an example, markers of cerebral small vessel disease, such as enlarged perivascular spaces (EPVS) and lacunes, can be very varied in their appearance while exhibiting high inter-class similarity, making this task highly challenging for human raters. In this work, we investigate joint models of individual rater behaviour and multirater consensus in a deep learning setting, and apply it to a brain lesion object-detection task. Results show that jointly modelling both individual and consensus estimates leads to significant improvements in performance when compared to directly predicting consensus labels, while also allowing the characterization of human-rater consistency.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2018

3D multirater RCNN for multimodal multiclass detection and characterisation of extremely small objects

Extremely small objects (ESO) have become observable on clinical routine magnetic resonance imaging acquisitions, thanks to a reduction in acquisition time at higher resolution. Despite their small size (usually $<$10 voxels per object for an image of more than $10^6$ voxels), these markers reflect tissue damage and need to be accounted for to investigate the complete phenotype of complex pathological pathways. In addition to their very small size, variability in shape and appearance leads to high labelling variability across human raters, resulting in a very noisy gold standard. Such objects are notably present in the context of cerebral small vessel disease where enlarged perivascular spaces and lacunes, commonly observed in the ageing population, are thought to be associated with acceleration of cognitive decline and risk of dementia onset. In this work, we redesign the RCNN model to scale to 3D data, and to jointly detect and characterise these important markers of age-related neurovascular changes. We also propose training strategies enforcing the detection of extremely small objects, ensuring a tractable and stable training process.

cs.CV↗