Hybrid artificial neural network segmentation and classification of dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging (DEMRI) of...

The evaluation of pediatric osteosarcoma has suffered from the lack of an accurate imaging measure of response. One major problem is that osteosarcoma do not shrink in response to chemotherapy; instead, viable tumor is replaced by necrotic tissue. Currently available techniques that use dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging to quantitatively evaluate tumor response fail to assess the percentage of necrosis. At present, histopathologic evaluation of resected tissue is the only means of measuring the percentage of necrosis in treated osteosarcoma. The current study presents a non-invasive method to visualize necrotic and viable tumor and quantitatively assess the response of osteosarcoma. Our technique uses a hybrid neural network consisting of a Kohonen self-organizing map to segment dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance images and a multi-layer backpropagation neural network to classify the segmented images. Because the hybrid neural network is completely automated, our technique removes both inter- and intra-operator error. An analysis comparing the percentage of necrosis from our technique to the histopathologic analysis revealed a highly significant Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.617 with p < 0.001.