GHA-DenseNet prediction and diagnosis of malignancy in femoral bone tumors using magnetic resonance imaging

• Published in: Journal of bone oncology Vol. 44; p. 100520
• Main Authors: Ye, Yuguang, Chen, Yusi, Zhu, Daxin, Huang, Yifeng, Huang, Ying, Li, Xiadong, Xiahou, Jianbing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier GmbH 01.02.2024; Elsevier
• Subjects: Attention module; Bone tumour; Deep convolutional network model; GHA-DenseNet; Magnetic resonance imaging; Deep convolutional network model; GHA-DenseNet; Attention module; Magnetic resonance imaging; Bone tumour
• ISSN: 2212-1374; 2212-1366; 2212-1374
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbo.2023.100520

•The study uses specialized pre-trained CNN models for accurate classification of T1 and T2 MRI bone tumor images.•GHA-DenseNet is a novel variant of the DenseNet architecture that improves malignancy classification particularly when dealing with a limited number of MRI samples.•The bone tumor prediction model achieves over 80% accuracy by combining classifier outputs with patient-specific data.•Overfitting issues are addressed through connectivity pruning and dropout methods due to the small dataset.•Future research directions and improvements are suggested, reflecting a commitment to progress in the bone oncology field. Due to their aggressive nature and poor prognosis, malignant femoral bone tumors present considerable hurdles. Early treatment commencement is essential for enhancing vital and practical outcomes. In this investigation, deep learning algorithms will be used to analyze magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to identify bone tumors that are malignant. The study cohort included 44 patients, with ages ranging from 17 to 78 (22 women and 22 males). To categorize T1 and T2 weighted MRI data, this paper presents an improved DenseNet network model for the classification of bone tumor MRI, which is named GHA-DenseNet. Based on the original DenseNet model, the attention module is added to solve the problem that the deep convolutional model can reduce the loss of key features when capturing the location and content information of femoral bone tumor tissue due to the limitation of local receptive field. In addition, the sparse connection mode is used to prune the connection mode of the original model, so as to remove unnecessary and retain more useful fast connection mode, and alleviate the overfitting problem caused by small dataset size and image characteristics. In a clinical model designed to anticipate tumor malignancy, the utilization of T1 and T2 classifier output values, in combination with patient-specific clinical information, was a crucial component. The T1 classifier's accuracy during the training phase was 92.88% whereas the T2 classifier's accuracy was 87.03%. Both classifiers demonstrated accuracy of 95.24% throughout the validation phase. During training and validation, the clinical model's accuracy was 82.17% and 81.51%, respectively. The clinical model's receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve demonstrated its capacity to separate classes. The proposed method does not require manual segmentation of MRI scans because it makes use of pretrained deep learning classifiers. These algorithms have the ability to predict tumor malignancy and shorten the diagnostic and therapeutic turnaround times. Although the procedure only needs a little amount of radiologists' involvement, more testing on a larger patient cohort is required to confirm its efficacy.