Deep learning-based ultrasound diagnostic model for follicular thyroid carcinoma

It is challenging to preoperatively diagnose follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) on ultrasound images. This study aimed to develop an end-to-end diagnostic model that can classify thyroid tumors into benign tumors, FTC and other malignant tumors based on deep learning.

This retrospective multi-center study included 10,771 consecutive adult patients who underwent conventional ultrasound and postoperative pathology between January 2018 and September 2021. We proposed a novel data augmentation method and a mixed loss function to solve an imbalanced dataset and applied them to a pre-trained convolutional neural network and transformer model that could effectively extract image features. The proposed model can directly identify FTC from other malignant subtypes and benign tumors based on ultrasound images.

The testing dataset included 1078 patients (mean age, 47.3 years ± 11.8 (SD); 811 female patients; FTCs, 39 of 1078 (3.6%); Other malignancies, 385 of 1078 (35.7%)). The proposed classification model outperformed state-of-the-art models on differentiation of FTC from other malignant sub-types and benign ones, achieved an excellent diagnosis performance with balanced-accuracy 0.87, AUC 0.96 (95% CI: 0.96, 0.96), mean sensitivity 0.87 and mean specificity 0.92. Meanwhile, it was superior to radiologists included in this study for thyroid tumor diagnosis (balanced-accuracy: Junior 0.60, p < 0.001; Mid-level 0.59, p < 0.001; Senior 0.66, p < 0.001).

The developed classification model addressed the class-imbalanced problem and achieved higher performance in differentiating FTC from other malignant subtypes and benign tumors compared with existing methods.

Question Deep learning has the potential to improve preoperatively diagnostic accuracy for follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC). Findings The proposed model achieved high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing follicular thyroid carcinoma, outperforming other models. Clinical relevance The proposed model is a promising computer-aided diagnostic tool for the clinical diagnosis of FTC, which potentially could help reduce missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis for FTC.