# Efficient Feature Extraction Using Light-Weight CNN Attention-Based Deep Learning Architectures for Ultrasound Fetal Plane Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17396 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17396/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Aggregated Residual Transformations for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05431/) (2016)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks for Classification of Alzheimer's Disease: Overview and Reproducible Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07773/) (2019)
- [SonoNet: Real-Time Detection and Localisation of Fetal Standard Scan Planes in Freehand Ultrasound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.05601/) (2016)
- [Transformers in Medical Image Analysis: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12165/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Cross-domain Image Classification by Distance Metric Guided Feature Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08433/) (2020)
- [Deep Integrated Pipeline of Segmentation Guided Classification of Breast Cancer from Ultrasound Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14013/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [HFS-TriNet: A Three-Branch Collaborative Feature Learning Network for Prostate Cancer Classification from TRUS Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22388/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ultrasound fetal imaging is beneficial to support prenatal development because it is affordable and non-intrusive. Nevertheless, fetal plane classification (FPC) remains challenging and time-consuming for obstetricians since it depends on nuanced clinical aspects, which increases the difficulty in identifying relevant features of the fetal anatomy. Thus, to assist with its accurate feature extraction, a lightweight artificial intelligence architecture leveraging convolutional neural networks and attention mechanisms is proposed to classify the largest benchmark ultrasound dataset. The approach fine-tunes from lightweight EfficientNet feature extraction backbones pre-trained on the ImageNet1k. to classify key fetal planes such as the brain, femur, thorax, cervix, and abdomen. Our methodology incorporates the attention mechanism to refine features and 3-layer perceptrons for classification, achieving superior performance with the highest Top-1 accuracy of 96.25%, Top-2 accuracy of 99.80% and F1-Score of 0.9576. Importantly, the model has 40x fewer trainable parameters than existing benchmark ensemble or transformer pipelines, facilitating easy deployment on edge devices to help clinical practitioners with real-time FPC. The findings are also interpreted using GradCAM to carry out clinical correlation to aid doctors with diagnostics and improve treatment plans for expectant mothers.