# Improved Esophageal Varices Assessment from Non-Contrast CT Scans

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.13210 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13210/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [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)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [A Closer Look at Spatiotemporal Convolutions for Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11248/) (2017)
- [Two-Stream Convolutional Networks for Action Recognition in Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2199/) (2014)
- [EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09070/) (2019)
- [Convolutional Two-Stream Network Fusion for Video Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.06573/) (2016)
- [A Short Note about Kinetics-600](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.01340/) (2018)
- [Efficient Low-rank Multimodal Fusion with Modality-Specific Factors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00064/) (2018)
- [UniFormer: Unifying Convolution and Self-attention for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09450/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [PLUS: Plug-and-Play Enhanced Liver Lesion Diagnosis Model on Non-Contrast CT Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03872/) (2025)
- [Leveraging Semantic Asymmetry for Precise Gross Tumor Volume Segmentation of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma in Planning CT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18290/) (2024)
- [Non-Contrast CT Esophageal Varices Grading through Clinical Prior-Enhanced Multi-Organ Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19415/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Esophageal varices (EV), a serious health concern resulting from portal hypertension, are traditionally diagnosed through invasive endoscopic procedures. Despite non-contrast computed tomography (NC-CT) imaging being a less expensive and non-invasive imaging modality, it has yet to gain full acceptance as a primary clinical diagnostic tool for EV evaluation. To overcome existing diagnostic challenges, we present the Multi-Organ-cOhesion-Network (MOON), a novel framework enhancing the analysis of critical organ features in NC-CT scans for effective assessment of EV. Drawing inspiration from the thorough assessment practices of radiologists, MOON establishes a cohesive multiorgan analysis model that unifies the imaging features of the related organs of EV, namely esophagus, liver, and spleen. This integration significantly increases the diagnostic accuracy for EV. We have compiled an extensive NC-CT dataset of 1,255 patients diagnosed with EV, spanning three grades of severity. Each case is corroborated by endoscopic diagnostic results. The efficacy of MOON has been substantiated through a validation process involving multi-fold cross-validation on 1,010 cases and an independent test on 245 cases, exhibiting superior diagnostic performance compared to methods focusing solely on the esophagus (for classifying severe grade: AUC of 0.864 versus 0.803, and for moderate to severe grades: AUC of 0.832 versus 0.793). To our knowledge, MOON is the first work to incorporate a synchronized multi-organ NC-CT analysis for EV assessment, providing a more acceptable and minimally invasive alternative for patients compared to traditional endoscopy.