Diagnosis of lymph node metastasis in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma using deep learning

Haosheng Tang; Guo Li; Chao Liu; Donghai Huang; Xin Zhang; Yuanzheng Qiu; Yong Liu

doi:10.1002/lio2.742

Diagnosis of lymph node metastasis in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma using deep learning

Laryngoscope Investig Otolaryngol. 2022 Jan 22;7(1):161-169. doi: 10.1002/lio2.742. eCollection 2022 Feb.

Authors

Haosheng Tang^{1

2

3}, Guo Li^{1

2

3

4}, Chao Liu^{1

2

3}, Donghai Huang^{1

2

3}, Xin Zhang^{1

2

3}, Yuanzheng Qiu^{1

2

3

4}, Yong Liu^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Xiangya Hospital Central South University Changsha Hunan China.
² Otolaryngology Major Disease Research Key Laboratory of Hunan Province Changsha Hunan China.
³ Clinical Research Center for Laryngopharyngeal and Voice Disorders in Hunan Province Changsha Hunan China.
⁴ National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders (Xiangya Hospital) Changsha Hunan China.

Abstract

Background: To build an automatic pathological diagnosis model to assess the lymph node metastasis status of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) based on deep learning algorithms.

Study design: A retrospective study.

Methods: A diagnostic model integrating two-step deep learning networks was trained to analyze the metastasis status in 85 images of HNSCC lymph nodes. The diagnostic model was tested in a test set of 21 images with metastasis and 29 images without metastasis. All images were scanned from HNSCC lymph node sections stained with hematoxylin-eosin (HE).

Results: In the test set, the overall accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of the diagnostic model reached 86%, 100%, and 75.9%, respectively.

Conclusions: Our two-step diagnostic model can be used to automatically assess the status of HNSCC lymph node metastasis with high sensitivity.

Level of evidence: NA.

Keywords: convolutional neural network; deep learning; digital pathology; head and neck squamous cell carcinoma; lymph node metastasis.