  Recent advancements in computer vision promise to automate medical image
analysis. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that would profit from
computer-based diagnosis, as there are no direct markers known, and doctors
have to rely on manual inspection of X-ray images. In this work, we present a
multi-task deep learning model that simultaneously learns to localize joints on
X-ray images and diagnose two kinds of joint damage: narrowing and erosion.
Additionally, we propose a modification of label smoothing, which combines
classification and regression cues into a single loss and achieves 5% relative
error reduction compared to standard loss functions. Our final model obtained
4th place in joint space narrowing and 5th place in joint erosion in the global
RA2 DREAM challenge.
