Multiple Instance Learning in Medical Images: A Systematic Review

This article presents a systematic review of Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) applied to image classification, specifically highlighting its applications in medical imaging. Motivated by the need for a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis due to the scarcity of recent reviews, this study uses defined selection criteria to systematically assess the quality and synthesize data from relevant studies. Focusing on MIL, a subfield of machine learning that deals with learning from sets of instances or “bags”, this review is crucial for medical diagnosis, where accurate lesion detection is a challenge. The review details the methodologies, advances and practical implementations of MIL, emphasizing the attention-grabbing and transformative mechanisms that improve the analysis of medical images. Challenges such as the need for extensive annotated datasets and significant computational resources are discussed. In addition, the review covers three main topics: the characterization of MIL algorithms in various imaging domains, a detailed evaluation of performance metrics, and a critical analysis of data structures and computational resources. Despite these challenges, MIL offers a promising direction for research with significant implications for medical diagnostics, highlighting the importance of continued exploration and improvement in this area.