DeepChest: Dynamic Gradient-Free Task Weighting for Effective Multi-Task Learning in Chest X-Ray Classification
Mohamed, Youssef Mohamed, Noran Abouhashad, Khaled Tang, Feilong Atito, Sara Jameel, Shoaib Razzak, Imran Zaky, Ahmed B
Mohamed, Youssef
Mohamed, Noran
Abouhashad, Khaled
Tang, Feilong
Atito, Sara
Jameel, Shoaib
Razzak, Imran
Zaky, Ahmed B
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Computational Biology
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Abstract
While Multi-Task Learning (MTL) offers inherent advantages in complex domains such as medical imaging by enabling shared representation learning, effectively balancing task contributions remains a significant challenge. This paper addresses this critical issue by introducing DeepChest, a novel, computationally efficient and effective dynamic taskweighting framework specifically designed for multi-label chest X-ray (CXR) classification. Unlike existing heuristic or gradient-based methods that often incur substantial overhead, DeepChest leverages a performance-driven weighting mechanism based on effective analysis of task-specific loss trends. Given a network architecture (e.g., ResNet18), our model-agnostic approach adaptively adjusts task importance without requiring gradient access, thereby significantly reducing memory usage and achieving a threefold increase in training speed. It can be easily applied to improve various state-of-the-art methods. Extensive experiments on a large-scale CXR dataset demonstrate that DeepChest not only outperforms state-of-the-art MTL methods by 7% in overall accuracy but also yields substantial reductions in individual task losses, indicating improved generalization and effective mitigation of negative transfer. The efficiency and performance gains of DeepChest pave the way for more practical and robust deployment of deep learning in critical medical diagnostic applications. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/youssefkhalil320/DeepChest-MTL.
Citation
Y. Mohamed, N. Mohamed, K. Abouhashad, F. Tang, S. Atito, S. Jameel , et al., "DeepChest: Dynamic Gradient-Free Task Weighting for Effective Multi-Task Learning in Chest X-Ray Classification," 2026, pp. 3285-3294.
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2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData)
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46 Information and Computing Sciences, 4611 Machine Learning
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2025 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData)
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IEEE