Feature-fusion improves MRI single-shot deep learning detection of small brain metastases

• Published in: Journal of neuroimaging Vol. 32; no. 1; p. 111
• Main Authors: Amemiya, Shiori, Takao, Hidemasa, Kato, Shimpei, Yamashita, Hiroshi, Sakamoto, Naoya, Abe, Osamu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Algorithms; Brain Neoplasms - diagnostic imaging; Deep Learning; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Male; Sensitivity and Specificity; deep learning; brain metastasis; brain tumors; single-shot detector; MRI
• ISSN: 1552-6569
• DOI: 10.1111/jon.12916

To examine whether feature-fusion (FF) method improves single-shot detector's (SSD's) detection of small brain metastases on contrast-enhanced (CE) T1-weighted MRI. The study included 234 MRI scans from 234 patients (64.3 years±12.0; 126 men). The ground-truth annotation was performed semiautomatically. SSDs with and without an FF module were developed and trained using 178 scans. The detection performance was evaluated at the SSDs' 50% confidence threshold using sensitivity, positive-predictive value (PPV), and the false-positive (FP) per scan with the remaining 56 scans. FF-SSD achieved an overall sensitivity of 86.0% (95% confidence interval [CI]: [83.0%, 85.6%]; 196/228) and 46.8% PPV (95% CI: [42.0%, 46.3%]; 196/434), with 4.3 FP (95% CI: [4.3, 4.9]). Lesions smaller than 3 mm had 45.8% sensitivity (95% CI: [36.1%, 45.5%]; 22/48) with 2.0 FP (95% CI: [1.9, 2.1]). Lesions measuring 3-6 mm had 92.3% sensitivity (95% CI: [86.5%, 92.0%]; 48/52) with 1.8 FP (95% CI: [1.7, 2.2]). Lesions larger than 6 mm had 98.4% sensitivity (95% CI: [97.8%, 99.4%]; 126/128) 0.5 FP (95% CI: [0.5, 0.8]) per scan. FF-SSD had a significantly higher sensitivity for lesions < 3 mm (p = 0.008, t = 3.53) than the baseline SSD, while the overall PPV was similar (p = 0.06, t = -2.16). A similar trend was observed even when the detector's confidence threshold was varied as low as 0.2, for which the FF-SSD's sensitivity was 91.2% and the FP was 9.5. The FF-SSD algorithm identified brain metastases on CE T1-weighted MRI with high accuracy.