Volume 39, Issue 3 e12860
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Predictive effect of computed tomography imaging omics features under deep learning on metastatic lymph nodes of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Jianpeng Yuan

Jianpeng Yuan

Department of Radiology, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China

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Wensheng Huang

Wensheng Huang

Department of Radiology, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China

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Yongshun Wu

Yongshun Wu

Department of Radiology, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China

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Long Liu

Long Liu

Department of Radiology, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China

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Chao Bu

Chao Bu

Department of Radiology, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China

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Shuqiang Wang

Shuqiang Wang

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

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Weidong Zhang

Corresponding Author

Weidong Zhang

Department of Radiology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou, China

Correspondence

Weidong Zhang, Department of Radiology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou 510060, China.

Email: [email protected]

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First published: 03 November 2021
Citations: 1

Jianpeng Yuan and Wensheng Huang contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

This article was to explore the adoption value of deep learning combined with computed tomography (CT) imaging omics in the prediction of metastatic lymph nodes of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). An end-to-end neural network architecture was designed based on the fully convolutional neural network (FCNN), which was applied to the CT image analysis of 52 patients with lymphatic metastasis and 36 patients without lymphatic metastasis. Patient's lymph node volume (V), the largest cross-sectional shortest diameter (d-value), and other macro characteristics were recorded. The microscopic features of its CT imaging omics were extracted. Moreover, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was utilized to analyse the prediction performance (accuracy, area under the curve [AUC], and Youden index) of each feature for lymphatic metastasis. The results showed that the lymph node volume (4.37 ± 0.67) and the shortest diameter of the largest cross section (12.35 ± 2.31) of patients with lymph node metastasis were greatly larger than those without lymph node metastasis (1.84 ± 0.65, 7.98 ± 2.04) (P < 0.05). There were five features that met the conditions of AUC > 0.7 and Yoden index>0.5, including lymph node volume (AUC area 0.945, Youden index 0.597), the shortest diameter of the largest cross section (AUC area 0.746, Youden index 0.539), Surface Area Density (AUC area 0.809, Youden index 0.552), Compactness1 (AUC area 0.751, Youden index 0.537), and Convex Hull Volume (AUC area 0.751, Youden index 0.537). The AUC of V+ Surface Area Density + Compactness1 + Convex Hull Volume was 0.876, and the prediction accuracy was 92.11%. In short, the prediction model composed of the macroscopic features of CT images and some imaging omics features based on deep learning showed high accuracy and AUC for the prediction of NPC metastatic lymph nodes. Moreover, V + Surface Area Density + Compactness1 + Convex Hull Volume can be used as the optimal feature combination model for predicting NPC lymphatic metastasis.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

None.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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