Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Image Analysis of Acetaminophen-Induced Acute Hepatic Injury in Sprague-Dawley Rats

Although drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a major target of the pharmaceutical industry, we currently lack an efficient model for evaluating liver toxicity in the early stage of its development. Recent progress in artificial intelligence-based deep learning technology promises to improve the accuracy and robustness of current toxicity prediction models. Mask region-based CNN (Mask R-CNN) is a detection-based segmentation model that has been used for developing algorithms. In the present study, we applied a Mask R-CNN algorithm to detect and predict acute hepatic injury lesions induced by acetaminophen (APAP) in Sprague-Dawley rats. To accomplish this, we trained, validated, and tested the model for various hepatic lesions, including necrosis, inflammation, infiltration, and portal triad. We confirmed the model performance at the whole-slide image (WSI) level. The training, validating, and testing processes, which were performed using tile images, yielded an overall model accuracy of 96.44%. For confirmation, we compared the model's predictions for 25 WSIs at 20× magnification with annotated lesion areas determined by an accredited toxicologic pathologist. In individual WSIs, the expert-annotated lesion areas of necrosis, inflammation, and infiltration tended to be comparable with the values predicted by the algorithm. The overall predictions showed a high correlation with the annotated area. The R square values were 0.9953, 0.9610, and 0.9445 for necrosis, inflammation plus infiltration, and portal triad, respectively. The present study shows that the Mask R-CNN algorithm is a useful tool for detecting and predicting hepatic lesions in non-clinical studies. This new algorithm might be widely useful for predicting liver lesions in non-clinical and clinical settings.