# Gravity Network for end-to-end small lesion detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12876 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12876/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Focal Loss for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02002/) (2017)
- [Object Detection with Deep Learning: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05511/) (2018)
- [A Survey of Deep Learning-based Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09408/) (2019)
- [Recent advances and clinical applications of deep learning in medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13381/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning for Chest X-ray Analysis: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08700/) (2021)
- [Augmentation for small object detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07296/) (2019)
- [Accurate Pulmonary Nodule Detection in Computed Tomography Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04303/) (2017)
- [Deep Learning for Computational Cytology: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05126/) (2022)
- [Overcoming the limitations of patch-based learning to detect cancer in whole slide images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00617/) (2020)
- [3D Bounding Box Detection in Volumetric Medical Image Data: A Systematic Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05745/) (2020)
- [Retinal Microaneurysms Detection using Local Convergence Index Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06865/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces a novel one-stage end-to-end detector specifically designed to detect small lesions in medical images. Precise localization of small lesions presents challenges due to their appearance and the diverse contextual backgrounds in which they are found. To address this, our approach introduces a new type of pixel-based anchor that dynamically moves towards the targeted lesion for detection. We refer to this new architecture as GravityNet, and the novel anchors as gravity points since they appear to be "attracted" by the lesions. We conducted experiments on two well-established medical problems involving small lesions to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach: microcalcifications detection in digital mammograms and microaneurysms detection in digital fundus images. Our method demonstrates promising results in effectively detecting small lesions in these medical imaging tasks.