# TransFair: Transferring Fairness from Ocular Disease Classification to Progression Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.00051 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00051/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [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)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (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)
- [Nuanced Metrics for Measuring Unintended Bias with Real Data for Text Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.04561/) (2019)
- [Data Decisions and Theoretical Implications when Adversarially Learning Fair Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.00075/) (2017)
- [Reading Race: AI Recognises Patient's Racial Identity In Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10356/) (2021)
- [On the Challenges and Perspectives of Foundation Models for Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05705/) (2023)
- [Generative models improve fairness of medical classifiers under distribution shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09218/) (2023)
- [Applications of Deep Learning in Fundus Images: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09864/) (2021)
- [Generating Synthetic Mixed-type Longitudinal Electronic Health Records for Artificial Intelligent Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12047/) (2021)
- [Harvard Glaucoma Fairness: A Retinal Nerve Disease Dataset for Fairness Learning and Fair Identity Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09264/) (2023)
- [Bias Mimicking: A Simple Sampling Approach for Bias Mitigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15605/) (2022)
- [Debiasing Methods for Fairer Neural Models in Vision and Language Research: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05617/) (2022)
- [ImageFlowNet: Forecasting Multiscale Image-Level Trajectories of Disease Progression with Irregularly-Sampled Longitudinal Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14794/) (2024)
- [FairDomain: Achieving Fairness in Cross-Domain Medical Image Segmentation and Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08813/) (2024)
- [Categorical Relation-Preserving Contrastive Knowledge Distillation for Medical Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03225/) (2021)
- [Learning to Teach Fairness-aware Deep Multi-task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08403/) (2022)
- [Post-processing fairness with minimal changes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15096/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in automated disease classification significantly reduces healthcare costs and improves the accessibility of services. However, this transformation has given rise to concerns about the fairness of AI, which disproportionately affects certain groups, particularly patients from underprivileged populations. Recently, a number of methods and large-scale datasets have been proposed to address group performance disparities. Although these methods have shown effectiveness in disease classification tasks, they may fall short in ensuring fair prediction of disease progression, mainly because of limited longitudinal data with diverse demographics available for training a robust and equitable prediction model. In this paper, we introduce TransFair to enhance demographic fairness in progression prediction for ocular diseases. TransFair aims to transfer a fairness-enhanced disease classification model to the task of progression prediction with fairness preserved. Specifically, we train a fair EfficientNet, termed FairEN, equipped with a fairness-aware attention mechanism using extensive data for ocular disease classification. Subsequently, this fair classification model is adapted to a fair progression prediction model through knowledge distillation, which aims to minimize the latent feature distances between the classification and progression prediction models. We evaluate FairEN and TransFair for fairness-enhanced ocular disease classification and progression prediction using both two-dimensional (2D) and 3D retinal images. Extensive experiments and comparisons with models with and without considering fairness learning show that TransFair effectively enhances demographic equity in predicting ocular disease progression.