Identifying Lymph Nodes and Their Statuses from Pretreatment Computer Tomography Images of Patients with Head and Neck Cancer Using a Clinical-Data-Driven Deep Learning Algorithm

Abstract

Background: Head and neck cancer is highly prevalent in Taiwan. Its treatment mainly relies on clinical staging, usually diagnosed from images. A major part of the diagnosis is whether lymph nodes are involved in the tumor. We present an algorithm for analyzing clinical images that integrates a deep learning model with image processing and attempt to analyze the features it uses to classify lymph nodes. Methods: We retrospectively collected pretreatment computed tomography images and surgery pathological reports for 271 patients diagnosed with, and subsequently treated for, naïve oral cavity, oropharynx, hypopharynx, and larynx cancer between 2008 and 2018. We chose a 3D UNet model trained for semantic segmentation, which was evaluated for inference in a test dataset of 29 patients. Results: We annotated 2527 lymph nodes. The detection rate of all lymph nodes was 80%, and Dice score was 0.71. The model has a better detection rate at larger lymph nodes. For those identified lymph nodes, we found a trend where the shorter the short axis, the more negative the lymph nodes. This is consistent with clinical observations. Conclusions: The model showed a convincible lymph node detection on clinical images. We will evaluate and further improve the model in collaboration with clinical physicians.

Automated Laryngeal Cancer Detection and Classification Using Dwarf Mongoose Optimization Algorithm with Deep Learning

“…Laryngeal cancer (LCA) is one of the major and preeminent malignant tumors of the neck and head area. Treatment results of LCA in an earlier phase are good, whereby five-year patient survival rates with Tis, T1, and T2 LCA range around 80–90% [ 1 ]. While endoscopy becomes the major tool for identifying LCA in medical applications, endoscopy with standard white light can be confined for both contrast and resolution which provides the management or misdiagnosis of superficial mucosal cancer and the pioneering lesions associated with it, still by expert endoscopists.…”