# PLUS: Plug-and-Play Enhanced Liver Lesion Diagnosis Model on Non-Contrast CT Scans

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03872 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03872/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jul 2025.

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

- [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)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Masked-attention Mask Transformer for Universal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01527/) (2021)
- [Knowledge Distillation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05525/) (2020)
- [Per-Pixel Classification is Not All You Need for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06278/) (2021)
- [UNETR: Transformers for 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10504/) (2021)
- [The Liver Tumor Segmentation Benchmark (LiTS)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04056/) (2019)
- [VM-UNet: Vision Mamba UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02491/) (2024)
- [Gated Multimodal Units for Information Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.01992/) (2017)
- [nnU-Net Revisited: A Call for Rigorous Validation in 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09556/) (2024)
- [E2Net: An Edge Enhanced Network for Accurate Liver and Tumor Segmentation on CT Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09791/) (2020)
- [Spectral Adversarial MixUp for Few-Shot Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01207/) (2023)
- [A Cascaded Approach for ultraly High Performance Lesion Detection and False Positive Removal in Liver CT Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16036/) (2023)
- [Liver Tumor Screening and Diagnosis in CT with Pixel-Lesion-Patient Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08268/) (2023)
- [LIDIA: Precise Liver Tumor Diagnosis on Multi-Phase Contrast-Enhanced CT via Iterative Fusion and Asymmetric Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13217/) (2024)
- [Improved Esophageal Varices Assessment from Non-Contrast CT Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13210/) (2024)
- [Improving 3D Medical Image Segmentation at Boundary Regions using Local Self-attention and Global Volume Mixing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15360/) (2024)
- [GLFNET: Global-Local (frequency) Filter Networks for efficient medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00396/) (2024)
- [HiFiSeg: High-Frequency Information Enhanced Polyp Segmentation with Global-Local Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02528/) (2024)

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

- [Non-Contrast CT Esophageal Varices Grading through Clinical Prior-Enhanced Multi-Organ Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19415/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Focal liver lesions (FLL) are common clinical findings during physical examination. Early diagnosis and intervention of liver malignancies are crucial to improving patient survival. Although the current 3D segmentation paradigm can accurately detect lesions, it faces limitations in distinguishing between malignant and benign liver lesions, primarily due to its inability to differentiate subtle variations between different lesions. Furthermore, existing methods predominantly rely on specialized imaging modalities such as multi-phase contrast-enhanced CT and magnetic resonance imaging, whereas non-contrast CT (NCCT) is more prevalent in routine abdominal imaging. To address these limitations, we propose PLUS, a plug-and-play framework that enhances FLL analysis on NCCT images for arbitrary 3D segmentation models. In extensive experiments involving 8,651 patients, PLUS demonstrated a significant improvement with existing methods, improving the lesion-level F1 score by 5.66%, the malignant patient-level F1 score by 6.26%, and the benign patient-level F1 score by 4.03%. Our results demonstrate the potential of PLUS to improve malignant FLL screening using widely available NCCT imaging substantially.